


Change Just As They Land

by onlytheshortones



Series: Give It Up [1]
Category: Veep
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Gen, M/M, Minor Dan/Jonah, OT3 friendship, Openly Bisexual Dan Egan, Panic Attacks, Songfic, Tagged so nobody complains but it is minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 09:08:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 30,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4054441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlytheshortones/pseuds/onlytheshortones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>So give it up, throw your hats in the air, and change just as they land, you're saying we'll get out of here. But something tells me that you're too scared to go.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>In the last weeks of high school, type A lacrosse player Dan Egan finds himself facing some demons from his past--specifically, his neighbors and childhood friends Amy Brookheimer (who just beat him out for valedictorian) and Jonah Ryan (who sells weed to the popular kids).<br/>Basically, three assholes navigate growing up and moving on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. That's Where We Once Belonged

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the infamous High School AU that I've been working at for weeks. It's cliché, it's self-indulgent, and honestly it sounds kind of like John Green's first draft, but that's what we're working with here. 
> 
> This wasn't written as a songfic, but I listened to [Give It Up by The Format](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPEKlgcIB4w) a _lot_ while writing it and then I realized that it fit for the title and the chapter titles and well, for everything, so I guess it became a songfic.
> 
> S/O to fuckboy squad, especially [rillrill](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rillrill/pseuds/rillrill) and [GoldStarGrl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/GoldStarGrl/pseuds/GoldStarGrl) for ideas and encouragement. Also for putting up with me. Also for driving me here. Go read everything they've written.  
> Also thanks to tumblr user [calendara](http://calendara.tumblr.com/) for giving me the low-down on typical high school life, given that I graduated from a hippie school in a class of twenty-six students. Some of it I ignored, but still, thank you for taking the time to give me a whole heap of information. 
> 
> Chapter 1 is more of a prologue, but the medium is the medium, so.

_“Amy! It’s my turn to be a good guy, it’s only fair if we take turns!” Jonah stomped over to Dan and Amy’s meeting spot under the willow tree, where they’d been close in conference._

_“Jonah, girls don’t have to be the bad guy,” Amy rolled her eyes._

_“Yuh-huh!” he snapped._

_“When was the last time you saw a movie with a girl who was the bad guy?” she asked calmly, hands on her hips, tilting her blonde head to the right._

_Jonah’s pout grew deeper._

_“See? You can’t think of any!” Amy said, clapping her hands together as if this was the end of the matter. “So I don’t have to be the bad guy.”_

_“But it’s not my turn anymore!” Jonah snapped._

_Amy turned to look at Dan._

_“What about The Little Mermaid, Amy?” Dan said, turning to face her, his argument already prepared. “Or Cinderella? Or The Wizard of Oz?”_

_“They don’t count!” Amy said, rolling her eyes again as though this were obvious. “They’re witches. We’re spies. Spies deal with criminals, not_ witches. _”_

_She had a point there, Dan had to admit. Playing spies involved a lot of running and jumping and somersaulting, and the monkey bars were always useful. Magic getting involved in the game just sounded confusing. Because it was fake magic, after all. It was hard to play if they didn’t all know what magic was going on when. They were at the park to have a fun game of spies, like they did most days. Changing the routine didn’t seem like a good idea._

_But still, it was preferable to taking his turn as bad guy. Not that he cared about being the bad guy or not. It was just that the bad guy was always alone. The other two got to scheme and plan and attack, and the bad guy just had to…well, deal with it. The planning was the whole fun in it anyway, and Dan would rather be on a team facing magic than alone in a game that made sense any day._

_“Well then why don’t we play a game with a witch?” he asked, looking to Jonah for support. Jonah nodded a little._

_“Because, dummy,” Amy rolled her eyes yet again. “If there’s a witch there has to be a princess. And I’m the only girl. I can’t play both.”_

_“You could be the witch and Jonah and I could both be princes!” Dan said._

_“Who ever heard of two princes in one story?” Amy asked._

_Jonah laughed._

_Dan swallowed hard. “Okay, fine. No witches. Jonah, how about you’re the bad guy again this round and then tomorrow I’ll be the bad guy?” he smiled at Jonah and blinked a couple of times._

_Jonah sighed. “Fine, but don’t forget,” he said._

_“Good,” said Amy, smiling. “So you’re a bad guy planning to take over the playground. Go start your evil scheme. We have to plan.”_

_Jonah walked away slowly, and Amy leaned in closer to Dan._

_“What are you gonna do tomorrow?” she asked._

_“We can stay home and swim in your pool,” he said. Taken care of. He touched his hand to his ear. “I’m getting intel that there’s been a hostile takeover on the playground,” he said._

_Amy smiled. “Sounds serious,” she said._

_Dan nodded gravely. “Oh, it is.”_


	2. Your Eyes Light Up When We Talk About the Past

The lacrosse season was finally officially over, and Dan felt relieved the way the rest of the team felt sentimental. It wasn’t that he hadn’t liked lacrosse. But this year, juggling debate and schoolwork and college applications and shit, lacrosse had just been one more source of stress. Plus, he didn’t even really like Natty Ice.

He filed out of the auditorium with the rest of the team, everyone around him talking excitedly about “one last blowout” and trading plans around who would bring what. Dan didn’t say anything. The banquet had been enough—seriously, why did they have to attend a fucking sports banquet like all the teams mattered the same amount? He had just spent hours sitting in an uncomfortable seat waiting for it to end while his friends passed around a bag of weed brownies like they had nothing to be afraid of, and the last thing he wanted to do was more of the same, but standing in an awkward half-circle around a keg.

“Dan-man, you coming tonight?” Adam shoved him, and it took almost all of his strength to keep from losing his balance.

“I don’t know man, my parents are pretty uptight lately,” he responded. It was a lie. His parents didn’t care what he did now he was into Duke.

“Bro, tell them it’s almost graduation! If we don’t celebrate now, when?” Adam was pretty earnest-looking, but Dan could feel the energy leaving his body even as he considered the idea of a party.

“Yeah, I’ll see what I can do,” he said.

Adam was distracted by Brian then, and Dan took a deep breath. Jesus, enough with the pressure already. Seriously, with all the parties and the games and the debates, it was really no wonder he’d lost valedictorian. Plus, it was a Monday night and he didn’t want to get trashed on a Monday night.

He followed his friends out to the parking lot, where they gathered around Tyler’s Jeep, still discussing plans. Dan’s stomach was starting to hurt, and he was hearing words like “keg” and “bonfire” and “leave now.” He didn’t know how he was going to get out of a kegger in the woods if they were going straight there. Adam had given him a ride here, and he couldn’t really walk home or call his parents.

“Are you fucking kiddingme?” He heard the shriek from across the parking lot, and looked up. Blond hair, shorts, sandals, leaning against a silver compact, phone to her ear. A silhouette against the 8PM sunset. Amy Brookheimer. His goddamn savior.

“Yo, Adam, I’m gonna take off actually,” Dan called over his shoulder, already crossing the parking lot. The lacrosse team erupted in a chorus of whoops and whistles.

“Yeah, Danny boy, get some!”

He made sure to hold his middle finger aloft as he kept walking.

Amy was still on the phone when he reached her car. She held up a finger and turned away from him again. Dan probably could find a way not to listen to this conversation, but…why bother?

“I don’t have time to buy a new fucking dress, Ed. I bought the first one and I looked hot, okay? What’s the problem?”

Dan chuckled to himself. That was Amy, true to form. He was pretty sure he remembered her kicking her mother for trying to put ribbons in her hair at their fifth-grade graduation.

“Well I don’t care about the fucking pictures.” Amy glanced back at Dan, and he looked down, pretending to be very interested in her back bumper.

“What the—I’ll use whatever language I want, what are we, in kindergarten?” She turned back to Dan and pulled the phone down from her mouth.

“What do you need, Dan?” she whispered.

“Can I have a ride home?” he whispered back.

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She pulled the phone back up. “Yes, I’m listening. I still don’t have the time. That’s not just gonna change, no matter what you say.”

Dan leaned against the car next to her, and she looked at him, eyebrows raised. He moved away from her.

“Can we talk about this later?” Amy was tapping her fingernails against the driver’s side window. “I’m still at school, I’m leaving the sports banquet and I have to give Dan a ride home.”

Dan pushed off from the car and moved to the other side, getting ready to get in.

“Don’t fucking start with that right now, Ed. I’m hanging up.”

She climbed into the car, and Dan followed suit.

“Trouble in paradise?” he asked as Amy started the car.

“Fuck off.”

He raised his hands in mock surrender. Amy sighed.

“His prom is this weekend, and he’s decided I have to wear a different dress to his prom than I did to ours, because suddenly he’s a fucking fashion expert.”

Dan snorted.

“Who even has a fucking prom this late?” Amy navigated them out of the parking lot and started home.

“I think a lot of schools do,” Dan responded.

“Shut up.”

“Okay.”

Amy exhaled a deep breath. “So, your friends aren’t having a party tonight?” she asked.

“They are,” he said. “Just…not in the mood.”

She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head to the right. “What, it’s not like you have anything better to do, is it?”

Dan looked over at her. “Thanks, Amy.”

“You know what I meant.” She was a calm driver, and her eyes stayed focused on the road even as she spoke. “Debate’s over, school’s almost over, it’s not like you’ve got a valedictory address to write or anything.” The corners of her mouth twitched up.

“You know what, Ames? Fuck you.” The name had just slipped out of his mouth, and he almost wished he could take it back. It wasn’t a big deal really, he just didn’t want it to be a thing now.

“Sorry, Dan, you’re right. It must be hard to lose.” She was still smiling, and he knew this was all in good fun, to her at least. “Of course, I wouldn’t know personally.”

“Yeah, yeah. Tell me, what was the volleyball team’s record this year?”

“Hey, that was nothing to do with me.”

“Under your leadership, Amy.”

She gave him a chuckle, and he smiled too.

“Wait, isn’t volleyball a fall sport?” he asked. Amy nodded. “So what were you even doing at the banquet? Didn’t you guys already have one?”

“Yeah, but they wanted all senior MVPs there. And captains, actually.” She smiled at him a little smugly. Whatever. Like he cared about being captain or not.

“Sorry you had to sit through that twice then.”

“Fucking waste of time.”

“Amen.”

Amy laughed. “Don’t every say _Amen_ again.”

“What about church, Amy?

“Do they let you into church?” she asked sarcastically.

Dan leaned back against his seat and breathed in. Funny, his stomachache had just about gone away. “You know, I actually wouldn’t know. I haven’t tried in a few years.”

Amy laughed. “Yeah, me neither. My parents give me so much shit about it, too. At least in the fall I scheduled captain’s practices for Sunday mornings so they couldn’t really fault me, but now it’s all the fucking time.”

“Me too,” Dan smiled. “Turns out Jonad still goes, so every week I get the _you’ll have friends there_ talk. Right.”

“He’s probably the ideal son,” Amy said lightly. “Nothing better to do than go to church and watch TV with his parents on a Friday.”

“Yeah, if your ideal son deals pot.” Dan felt a little bad, talking about Jonah this way with Amy of all people. Like they hadn’t all spent the same summer days in the park playing spies. _But that was a long time ago_ , he reminded himself.

“Fair point.” Amy turned into her driveway, and Dan looked up, momentarily confused. The ride had seemed shorter than usual. Amy was gathering her keys and her purse and all that, so Dan unbuckled and opened his door, a little disoriented.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said, once they were both out of the car.

“No problem.” She seemed distracted, checking her phone. Maybe she had texts from Ed. He probably shouldn’t linger, but there was definitely a part of him that wanted to, that felt like going home now would end something. But he hadn’t started anything.

“See you around,” he said.

“Yeah, careful getting home.” She looked up at him for a second and they smiled at each other.

“I’ll do my best to be safe,” he promised. She nodded, then turned and headed into the house. He watched her go in, then crossed the street to his front yard.

 

It wasn’t like he’d wanted to go to the party, but he’d already taken all his AP exams and all his other classes were jokes, so he was out of work to do and ended up on his bed staring at the ceiling at 9:30 at night. He could see Amy’s light on across the street. She was probably working on her speech.

He was feeling decidedly weird. Talking to Amy had been bizarre—not that they hadn’t talked before or anything. They had been in debate together this year and they usually saw each other at parties, and sometimes even ended up hanging out at said parties. But they hadn’t really been one-on-one, hadn’t really talked about their lives, or their parents, or teased each other since…well, since the sixth grade, really.

Dan didn’t usually feel nostalgic, but there was something in his stomach right now that was throwing him for a loop. He lowered his blinds. Maybe he should just go to bed. But he was wired, and feeling some kind of fucked-up, and maybe there was an easy solution to that.

He was usually more hesitant about this, but it was a Monday night and fuck it, he was feeling nostalgic anyway, so why not?

He sent the text as he walked down the stairs. By the time he had put on his jacket and shoes, he already had a response and he headed out the back door and cut through his backyard. Jonah was already waiting, his gangly mess of a body sitting in one of the swings on his old swingset, packing a bowl by the light of his phone.

“Hey, man,” Dan greeted him, trying not to sound nervous. What did he have to be nervous about?

“Hey,” Jonah said, not looking up from his task.

“Want me to hold the light?” Dan asked.

Jonah handed it to him, and Dan stood between Jonah and the house illuminating Jonah’s lap in silence. It was always like this at first. Dan never knew what to do or say to make the situation better. Like it or not, he was using Jonah for drugs and company, and Jonah knew it. It would get better when they smoked.

Dan looked down. Jonah had packed the bowl pretty tight, which made Dan apprehensive and excited in that sick way he reserved for nights like this.

“Shit.”

Dan looked down. “What’s up?”

“I forgot my lighter inside,” Jonah held the pipe in one hand and moved to stand. “I can go get it though, it’s not a big deal.”

Dan reached into his pocket. “Here,” he said, handing Jonah a small red Bic lighter.

“Oh. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“I don’t need the light anymore, we’re good,” Jonah said, holding his hand out for his phone. Dan handed it back to him, and moved to sit on the swing next to Jonah’s. Jonah lit and inhaled, and passed to Dan. Dan took a big hit without thinking too much, inhaled as much as he could, and coughed. A lot. Jonah laughed, and handed him a bottle of water, taking the pipe back and taking his own hit. Dan took the water bottle but didn’t sip. It was better to let the coughing pass. Jonah held the pipe until he stopped, then handed it to him. He took a smaller hit this time, then passed it back.

“So, Penn State?” he asked.

Jonah handed the pipe back. “Yep.” He paused, like he was going to say something more, but then he didn’t.

Dan exhaled and passed the pipe back. Jonah took another hit—a big one. He exhaled slowly, then lazily passed the pipe back off to Dan. “Duke, right?”

“Yeah,” Dan said, coughing a little bit again, and passing the pipe back again. “Did you hear Amy’s going to Williams?”

“Yeah,” Jonah said, examining the bowl. “And Rachel’s going to Harvard.”

Dan held his phone up to the bowl so Jonah could see it, a little disappointed that Jonah had expanded the subject to everyone at school instead of just, well…them.

“This has kicked,” Jonah said, giving it a shake for good measure.

“Should we pack another?” Dan asked.

“No, this is the good stuff, we should be fine.” He shook the pipe out over the grass and stowed it and his grinder back in his pocket, then stood up.

Dan stood too. “So, what are you doing right now?”

“I was just gonna go watch some South Park,” Jonah said. They both knew Dan would be joining him, but Dan still thought he should probably ask.

“That sounds great, mind if I join?”

Jonah shrugged. “Sure.”

 

Dan hated South Park. But it wasn’t that bad when he was this high. Jonah had been right, this was the good stuff, and it was enough for him to be lying on this comforter watching colorful shapes make weird noises. He was sure he could keep up with the plot if he tried, but he hated South Park, so why bother, this was fine.

“Do you have some Cheetos or something?” he asked.

Jonah reached over him to the bedside table, and grabbed a bag of potato chips, then handed it him. “These are like crack when you have munchies.”

“Thanks,” Dan said, opening the bag. They were salt and pepper chips, cheap shit, but as soon as he ate one he knew Jonah was right. “Shit that’s good.”

“Told you.” Jonah smiled in his smug sort of way.

Dan rolled over and stared up at the ceiling, still eating chips.

“Hey Jonah,” he said, before he could entirely stop himself.

“Yeah?” Jonah was probably only half-listening, and it would have been so easy not to say what he was about to say but he was in it now.

“Do you ever think how weird it is that we’re graduating in like, three weeks, and we’re not…we don’t…you, me, and Ames don’t even really know each other like, at all anymore?”

Jonah didn’t answer at first, and Dan wondered if he had even really asked the question. He could never tell these things when he was high. Maybe he had imagined the whole thing. Well, that was probably better.

“You and Amy still know each other.”

It took Dan a little while to register that, but when he did, he sighed. He was not in the mood for Jonah’s self-pity tonight.

“Yeah, in a way,” he allowed. “But so do you and I. We hang out more than I hang with her. But you know what I mean.”

“I guess,” Jonah said, but Dan could tell he was still thinking about their relative statuses instead of seriously contemplating the question.

“Amy gave me a ride home from the sports banquet tonight,” he said anyway, because he wanted to talk about it, regardless of what Jonah was feeling. “And it was like, the first time we’d talked just us since…well I guess since this one terrible group date sophomore year, but that doesn’t really count. You know, we talked about our parents and shit and like...it’s just weird, isn’t it? That like, we used to be at each others’ houses all the time and now it’s just…nothing.”

“Dan, we were kids.” Jonah sounded like he didn’t want to be having this conversation.

“Yeah, I know.” Dan stopped there. His head swam a little. He ate some more chips. He was probably being a jerk. After all, Jonah hadn’t had the high school experience he or Amy had. He hadn’t had the friends, gotten the grades, gone to the parties. Making him remember how it used to be was a pretty dick move. He looked up at the ceiling some more. Maybe he should just go be nostalgic at home. But that didn’t seem like the right thing to do right now, so he stayed put, listening to the voices coming from Jonah’s computer and trying to piece together what they were saying.

They cut out suddenly.

“It is weird.”

Dan rolled onto his side to face Jonah, but didn’t say anything. If Jonah was going to talk, he was going to do it on his own.

“We used to talk about the future, you know? You and Amy used to talk about where you’d go to college and it was all where we’d live and what we’d do and I always thought that the three of us would...would be…”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

Dan offered Jonah the bag of potato chips. Jonah took a handful.

“So, what’s up with you and Laurie?” Dan asked. There was a second of silence.

Jonah snorted. “Dude, what’s not up with me and Laurie?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “If it’s been _up_ longer than five hours, you should consult a doctor, Jonad.”

“Yeah, only if you’ve been using performance-enhancers, Dan.” Jonah smirked like he had just said something devastatingly clever.

Dan smiled at the ceiling. What an asshole.

_“Jonah!”_

Jonah sat up. Dan rolled onto his stomach and looked toward the door.

“What, mom?” Jonah called.

His door swung open without warning, and his mother stood there.

“Oh, hello, Dan.” She sounded surprised.

“Hello, Mrs. Ryan.”

“Do you knock, Mom?” Jonah snapped.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you had company. But honey, you should really be heading to bed. Dan, it was nice to see you, give your parents my best.”

She closed the door as she left.

Dan sat up on the edge of the bed. “Bedtime for Jonah!” he said in a singsong voice.

“Fuck off.”

“Make sure you brush your teeth!” Dan pulled his shoes and jacket back on.

“Make sure you go fuck yourself.”

It was too easy, too much fun. “Language, Jonah.”

“Bye, Dan,” Jonah said pointedly.

Dan laughed as he walked down the stairs and out the back door.

He didn’t necessarily feel better when he climbed into his own bed, but he felt maybe a little lighter, and sleep would definitely come easier now. Less than three weeks left until graduation.


	3. So the Stairs That You Could Climb Are the Ones You've Left Behind

The rest of the week passed slowly, lazily, like summer, but not quite as warm. Dan shook off the nostalgia, because seriously what the fuck was that? He gets in a car once and suddenly it’s all sunshine and roses and being ten years old was so much fun? Dan had a future now. He had Duke, and eventually a seat in the House of Representatives if he played his cards right. What did he need with a few kids he used to know?

Besides, he had plenty going for him even before college. Packs of girls following the lacrosse team around, looking for one great night to take to the bank before they lived out the rest of their boring lives. And Jackson Randall had been giving him that look, that “maybe we hook up in the backseat of my car at the next party and never discuss it again” look that Dan had grown pretty fond of, because honestly, it was kind of hot being the student body president’s dirty little secret.

All in all, Dan had it made, and as the week slipped by with more and more reminders of everything he had going for him, he hardly even thought about Amy or Jonah.

 

By Friday night, Dan was feeling fucking spectacular. As he, Adam, and Tyler climbed out of Tyler’s blue Jeep Wrangler, he was filled with this sense that he could do anything tonight. That tonight was the night his future began. And cliché as that sounded, it was a powerful feeling, and Dan liked feeling powerful. They walked into Amber Beckwith’s farmhouse and Dan could swear that the crowd parted for him. But maybe that was just the euphoric feeling of the weekend. But he wanted to keep feeling this good, so he headed straight for the keg and filled up a Solo cup.

He wandered the party for a while as he sipped his beer. His fucking friends were doing keg stands, and usually he’d go try to find some people from debate, but he saw Amy by the staircase with some other volleyball players, and a few other guys hanging out with Gary and the rest of the band geeks. So he trailed into the kitchen, where he saw, out the window, a bunch of preppy dicks getting high with Jonah. God, high school was fucking boring. The same people, doing the same stupid shit, over and over every fucking weekend.

He was two and a half drinks in when Jackson approached him, and he drained the cup in his hand for an even three as he followed Jackson out to his car.

It was hardly enough to steam up the windows. They were both drunk and Jackson was a little sloppy to begin with, but it was something, and Dan didn’t mind something. At least he didn’t mind it until he heard a knock on the window. Jackson froze under him.

At least they were clothed, Dan thought to himself, and sat up to look out the window. He exhaled slowly. It wasn’t too many people, and he wasn’t the one with something to be afraid of, but as soon as they saw his face, a chorus of whoops and cheers went up. Jackson was still frozen, flat on his back.

“Dude, we have to go out there.” Dan wasn’t exactly feeling at his best, but he knew that this situation had to be faced head-on.

“I can’t.”

“Jackson, if you don’t fucking go out there, it’s all anyone’s going to talk about until we graduate.” He was trying to keep his voice measured but honestly they didn’t have time for Jackson to put on his big-boy pants. They had to face it now.

“Yeah, they’ll talk about me.”

“Yeah.” Dan didn’t see the issue. Obviously this was a shit situation, but how it would be solved by staying in the car was entirely fucking foreign to him.

“Not you.”

“Well I’m not news, Jackson. I’ve been out since the eighth grade.” Dan pulled him up to a sitting position. That at least, was better.

“Yeah but I’m not like you.” Jackson didn’t look at him when he said it.

“You know what makes me like me, Jackson?” Dan was getting pissed. “I’m not a little bitch baby hiding in the car because I’m too scared to face a bunch of my classmates. You’re only scared because you think you have something to prove to them, and if you stay in this fucking car, then you never will.”

He looked out the window. People were still out there, and he wasn’t going to sit here babying a guy who he’d made out with maybe four times for convenience’s sake. He swung the door open and got out, slamming it behind him and finding himself face-to-face with Adam.

“Dude, why didn’t you ever tell us?” Adam was nudging him with his shoulder and Dan didn’t want to deal with this right now.

“Tell you what?” he asked wearily.

“That Jackson’s a fag.”

Dan was not physically imposing. He never had been. And for the most part, he had never really cared. Sure, there were times in lacrosse when he got pushed around a little, but he was fast and that was usually enough. Right now he wanted to be big and scary. But he wasn’t. And that meant he would have to attack the only way he could.

“Fuck you, Adam.”

“What?” Adam stepped back a pace.

“Is that what you call me, too?” Dan was furious. He had forgotten what was behind him, forgotten to wonder if Jackson was going to get out of the car or not. He sensed that more people were coming outside, but he didn’t care.

“No. You like girls too, right? It’s fine, Dan, I’m totally cool with it, I just--“

“You’re nothing, Adam, you know that?”

“Chill, man, I didn’t—“

“No, you are nothing. You know where I’m going, Adam? I’m going to Duke. With a full. Fucking. Ride. Where are you going? I’m gonna be fucking president one day, and you’ll be lucky to be wiping birdshit off the fucking motorcade.”

“Whoa, Dan, back off, man.” He didn’t know who had said it, but he didn’t care. He was so goddamn sick of this town, sick of this school, sick of this fucking tiny life.

“Call me a fucking fag, Adam. I dare you. Because guess what? It won’t change the fact that I’m better than you.”

Adam lunged for him, and it was suddenly a tangle of arms, and Dan hit the ground and he didn’t care, he wanted to hit back, but he didn’t know who was who anymore.

“Okay, okay, everyone take a step back.” Amy’s voice sounded collected, calm, like it always did. 

Dan felt a small hand on his shoulder. “Dan, go wait by my car.”

Dan stood up, seething. He didn’t want to go anywhere; he wanted to finish what he had started. Amy put her hand on his shoulder again. “Dan.”

He glared at Adam and everyone surrounding him. He squared up again but his heart was suddenly pounding, and he felt like the air was being squeezed from his lungs. No. Not now. Amy’s hand was still on his shoulder. He shook it off, shot a last dirty glare at Adam, and walked away.

“What, Adam, are you gonna hit me, too?” he heard Amy say behind him. She was drowned out by several male voices, but Dan kept walking until he reached her car, and he intentionally didn’t turn around to see what was happening. It was getting way hard to breathe, and he stuck a hand out to rest on the car to steady himself. He felt like he was going to collapse. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. He knew what he was supposed to do, but he was shaking and nauseous and Jesus Christ if this night got any worse he would probably kill himself. He was gasping for air now, and he knew that’s not how he was supposed to be breathing but—

“You okay?”

He turned around. Jonah was standing there.

“Not…really.” He leaned entirely against the car.

“I thought Adam was your best friend.”

“Jonah—“ Dan took a deep breath and stopped himself. He had made enough enemies tonight. He was tired, his heart was pounding, he still felt faint, and he just wanted to go home.

“What?” Jonah seemed ready to take a beating. Dan let his legs go out from under him and slid down the length of the car.

“Jesus!” Jonah grabbed him before he hit the ground and pulled him back up. “Seriously, are you okay?”

“What does it fucking look like, Jonah?”

Jonah propped Dan up against the front door and used his arms to awkwardly hold him there.

“Okay, what the hell, Dan?” Amy stalked over, keys in hand. “Since when do I have to be your fucking babysitter?”

Dan closed his eyes.

“Shit, is he okay?” her tone changed.

“I don’t think so.”

“Jonah, I gave you one fucking job.” He heard the locks of the car click. “Just get him in the car.”

Dan felt himself being pulled, almost gently, and then he was in Amy’s backseat, and he lied down, stretched out, and focused on breathing. He heard two more doors close and the car start.

“Are you okay to drive?” Jonah asked.

“Please. I’m stone-cold sober,” Amy answered. “Ed’s prom is tomorrow, I can’t really afford a hangover.”

They were moving now, and Dan groaned.

“It’ll be smoother going once we get off this dirt fucking road,” Amy snapped at him.

He breathed.

“Is he just wasted off his ass, what the fuck?” he could tell Amy was trying to whisper, but he could hear her perfectly clearly.

“I don’t think so. He seems sick or something. He’s all sweaty.”

“Yeah, well I don’t exactly trust you to know. I hope you brought some air freshener or something. I don’t want my car smelling like weed for the next week.”

“Oh, sorry,” Dan could practically hear Jonah roll his eyes. “I’ll buy you one of those pine tree things.”

“Fuck off, Jonah.”

Dan kept breathing. He was feeling a little better. Amy was right—the drive had gotten pretty smooth, and it was actually comforting him. He focused on his breathing, and lost track of how much time had passed. When he finally tuned back in, Amy and Jonah weren’t talking anymore. It was a long drive back home, he knew, and he was going to be fine by the end of it—he wouldn’t stick them with the responsibility of having to explain to his parents what was going on. Or taking care of him, if they chose to not involve his parents. He wouldn’t make them deal with him anymore. Plus, he had Xanax at home. Okay. He felt better. He sat up, and leaned his head against the cool glass of the window. That was nice. Jonah looked back at him, then at Amy. Dan pulled his phone from his back pocket. It was 11:24. He had several texts, but he could deal with those tomorrow. It wasn’t worth it now.

“Hey, Amy?” he said in a small voice.

“Yeah?” she still sounded pissed, and suddenly he wasn’t really sure what he wanted to say anyway, what he could say in this moment that would be right and fitting, something between _I’m sorry_ and _Thank you_ and _I could have handled it on my own thank you very much_ and _I swear I’m not usually like this_ and really, he didn’t think there was anything that could quite fit that bill, and Jonah was here, and there was so much history in the car with them that he kind of felt like the windows would blow out.

“Did you end up buying a new dress?” he asked instead, and he heard her sigh a little, but he wasn’t sure what kind of sigh it was.

“I borrowed one,” she said. He nodded and leaned his head against the window again, closing his eyes against the cool glass.

 

Dan woke to his phone ringing. He afforded it a half a glance, enough to see it was Amy calling and that it was the ungodly hour of 8 AM. On a Hangover Saturday. He let the call pass and rolled over in bed. And then it rang again.

He rolled back over and accepted the cool. “What, Amy?”

“Just checking to make sure you’re alive.” She sounded distracted, like she was reading or driving or something.

“And waking me up?” he garbled into the phone.

“Dan, it’s eight in the morning.” Amy sounded her usual self. He remembered from debate season that she actually woke up at six every day, like some kind of hyperproductive freak.

“Amy, I’m hungover,” he said.

“Yeah, you deserve it.” She said it matter-of-factly, but with an edge. Dan rubbed his eyes. It was too early for this.

“I’m not gonna fucking apologize to you, Amy. I didn’t ask you to get involved.”

“Screw you, Dan. I saved your ass and you know it. A little fucking gratitude would not be out of line.”

“Have fun at prom,” Dan said, and hung up.

Of course, now he was up, so he might as well get up and get his shit together. He felt kind of like death, but he needed to shake off last night, so he got out of bed, pulled on a pinny and some shorts, and grabbed his gym bag.

“Mom, can I take the car?” he called as he pounded down the stairs. He heard an acknowledgement that sounded something like a yes, grabbed the keys from the ring by the door, and took off.

 

The workout had been slow torture, but he swung by Starbucks for an iced coffee and took the long way home. There was something calming about driving, and after a night like last night, he needed to be calm. He adjusted his Ray-Bans and turned the music up as he drove. It didn’t do much to drown out his thoughts, but as long as he kept driving, even those wouldn’t get too dangerous.

 

He’d been home for a couple hours, showered, done some homework, and was reading a JFK biography when his mom called up to him that Jonah was here, at the door. She didn’t even sound that surprised, like she hadn’t noticed that Jonah hadn’t come to the house in years. But he went downstairs anyway, to the front door, and stood in the entryway because honestly he was not in the mood and had no intention of letting Jonah inside.

“Hey man, you okay?” Jonah sounded concerned and that pissed Dan off.

“I’m fine,” he said shortly, just trying to make Jonah go away so he could be alone with his pounding headache and the Kennedys.

“Okay, well I just wanted to make sure, because you went fucking postal last night,” Jonah pushed.

“I didn’t go postal, Jonad. I had a few beers, got a little riled up—“

“And had a panic attack.” Jonah was looking at him in this way, and Dan wasn’t sure what it meant, but he didn’t like it.

“I was drunk is all,” he said.

“Yeah, sure, Dan, you always stop breathing and collapse when you’re drunk.”

“Like you would fucking know.”

Jonah recoiled. Like that was the worst insult Dan could possibly throw at him.

“I just wanted to make sure you were doing okay.”

“I’m great,” Dan snapped through gritted teeth.

“You sound great.” Jonah smiled in that smug sarcastic way, and Dan wanted to hit him.

“Bye, Jonah,” he said, starting to close the door.

“By the way, Jackson’s doing okay too.” Dan paused at that. Jonah continued. “Yeah, a few of the other student gov people came for him and they all left together. Just thought you might want to know.”

“I don’t fucking care,” Dan snapped, and closed the door.

 

The good thing about lacrosse players was that they never really held grudges. It hadn’t taken much more than an apology to Adam (and Dan was almost as good at fake apologies as he was at fake flirtation) to get the team back in his corner.

“Bro, everyone gets a little whacked out when they’re drunk. No harm, no foul” Tyler had told him, clapping him on the back. It all made Dan a little sick but he had gotten used to biting it down by then. He could absolutely take two more weeks of this. He wasn’t going to throw his reputation away over one drunken almost-brawl.

He didn’t know why he’d gotten so upset anyway. It wasn’t like Adam had called _him_ a fag. Certainly nothing worth abandoning friends over, two weeks before graduation. Really, Dan didn’t know what had gotten into him lately. Spring fever, maybe. Graduation goggles, all that shit. Well, he was over it. He was getting out of this hellhole soon enough, and there was no reason to shake things up now. The week passed trancelike, monotonous, because this week was no different from any other anymore.

 

In the interest of their last weekend as high schoolers, the team had a closed party on Friday night. Dan had no fucking idea why they did that, given that usually the goal of a party for these guys was to get wasted and hit on girls, but he was grateful they did. Being surrounded by the people he had spent four years with, for better or worse, was soothing. These were his people, more than anyone else, he thought. Sure, he might have had more to talk about with debate kids, but he’d only started debate this year. These guys had been his people for a solid four years—many of them more than that, if you counted middle school. These were the guys who had thrown him in the lake at pre-season, who had teased him about every girl he’d ever spoken to (and remained silent about the guys). Sure, they were pigs, and sure, he’d probably never speak to any of them after high school, but still. It had been a nice few years. And he liked the thought of leaving with no attachments. He’d drink to that, he thought, smiling as the guys toasted rowdily. He took a sip.


	4. We Were Kids Back Then, As If We Could Progress

The weekend had passed in a blur, and his dad was away on a business trip for the next few days, so Dan had the car, and he left early for school on Monday, hoping to get some coffee on the way. As he walked out the door, fumbling with his backpack and keys, he sensed motion across the street and looked up, suddenly nervous to see Amy. But it wasn’t her. It was her sister Sophie, hopping from foot to foot waiting for the bus under the big oak tree in their yard. He hadn’t realized he was early enough for the middle school bus to still not be here.

He paused for a second, watching her. It was weird, because he hardly knew her at all, but he felt like he had seen her doing exactly this a million times before. _Whatever_. He got in the car, and pulled out of the driveway. It wasn’t until he was down the block that he realized—he was thinking of Amy. He was thinking of elementary school, when he and Amy and Jonah had waited for the bus under that tree, when he’d walked out of his house every morning to see Amy waiting exactly where Sophie was now.

He hated déjà vu.

 

Yearbooks came out on Tuesday and the week was the predictable rush of emotions and signatures. Dan was wildly sought after, as he’d expected, but he didn’t have much patience for the whole process. Anyone who held onto their high school yearbook like it was a treasure was someone with nothing ahead of them, and there was really no hope for them. He signed them all _See you on the other side –Dan Egan_ without prejudice, whether he’d known them well or not at all, for ten years or three days. It didn’t fucking matter anyway. He wouldn’t see any of these people ever again when he left for Duke.

At one point he was sitting with his friends in the cafeteria and he noticed Jonah hovering nearby. He looked up and met his eyes coldly. He glared until Jonah faded into the background. He was not signing Jonah Ryan’s fucking yearbook. Amy, at least, didn’t ask. He got the sense that she didn’t care for yearbooks much more than he did. His had only been signed by the people who had specifically asked to do so, and he hadn’t even looked at it. He didn’t plan to. What was the fucking point?

 

Friday after school was the senior barbecue. Dan’s dad was back in town, so he’d gotten a ride from Tyler as usual, and Tyler had brought one of the four grills, which meant that even if Dan had wanted to bail, he couldn’t have. The seniors congregated in the parking lot. Lucy Simpson pulled her Mercedes dead center and blasted music from the sound system, which meant no one was getting out any time soon. Dan gathered around Tyler’s Jeep with the rest of the team and found himself having a good time despite himself. Someone poured him a beer and he drank it happily, knowing that as long as he cleared out before dark, he wouldn’t be among the traditional group of idiots who got busted.

As the sun dipped lower, boundaries between groups faded a bit. More and more people got hungry, so they migrated towards whichever charcoal grill had the shortest line, and suddenly Dan was talking pleasantly with Gary Walsh. It felt kind of like campaigning, actually, like practice, working those charm muscles. He laughed at the right jokes, smiled at the right comments and told the right stories. This was what high school was good for. Tomorrow was the last day, so really this barbecue was his last test of how much he had truly learned.

His eyes caught on blond hair from across the parking lot. Amy was talking to Lena Sanders, smiling in that way she did when she wasn’t really listening but still wanted to be polite—he knew that look well from debate. She was wearing this striped dress and sandals and he laughed at something Gary was saying without really listening to it. He didn’t know if it was the sun catching on her hair or what, but she was beautiful. And he hated himself for thinking that, he shook his head to try to rid it from his mind (she had a boyfriend and he’d known her since they were babies, and also, ew), but it wasn’t going away so easy.

“Gary, sorry, I have to go check something,” he said, a thought suddenly occurring to him.

“Oh yeah, sure, sure,” Gary said quickly.

“Nice talking to you, buddy.” Dan clapped him on the shoulder and made eye contact before walking away. Schmoozing really was an art. High school was a nice place to practice because who the fuck actually mattered in high school? Certainly not Gary Walsh. He made a beeline for Tyler, still grilling.

“Hey bro, are you gonna take off before sunset?” he asked.

“What, and miss the party?” Tyler was already slurring a little, and Dan thought it was all the better because he wasn’t getting in a car with this asshole anyway.

“Okay. I’m gonna find another ride home then.”

“Dan-man, when’d you get so lame?” Tyler flipped a few patties haphazardly. The people in line stepped back a few paces.

“When I found out getting arrested for underage drinking could negate my college acceptance.”

Tyler sighed exaggeratedly. “You used to be fun, bro.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Dan started making his way through the crowd towards Amy. It took him a while to reach her, but once he did, she had just finished a conversation, so he got to skip the awkward hovering thing.

“Hey, Ames,” he said in his sweetest voice.

“What do you want?” she asked, looking down at her phone as though it contained state secrets or something.

“What? Just saying hi to my good pal.”

“Walking away in ten seconds.”

“Okay,” Dan put the façade down. “But did you like the whole childhood nickname thing?”

“Dan.” She looked him in the eye, unimpressed.

“Right. Can I get a ride home?” he asked.

“Oh, I wish I could,” she said with no inflection to indicate the truth of that statement. “But I’m not going home.”

“What? Don’t you have like, thirty little tasks to accomplish?” he asked, gesturing towards her phone.

“Nope. Going out with Ed.” She smiled at him.

Hmm. Maybe it was worth it to try something. He met her eyes and put on his best smile. “You couldn’t maybe…swing by my place to drop me off?”

She was shaking her head before he finished. “No.”

He dropped his voice a little. “I’d make it worth your while.”

Amy raised her eyebrows at him. “Would you, Dan?” she asked, her voice girlish and high. “But would you give me your class pin?”

He rolled his eyes. “I—“

“Dan, you can’t charm me,” she said through her smile. “And when you try, it actually comes out pretty terrifying.”

“Oh come on, Amy,” he said, because those words had just been a challenge and he was ready to wear her down.

“No, Dan,” she said, and it was final. “Go ask Jonah, I saw him around somewhere.” She disappeared into a crowd of volleyball girls, and Dan went off to find Jonah.

Of course, that was easy; he just looked up. Jonah was at the far side of the lot. Dan followed the shadow, and there he was, handing out 20-bags to some guys Dan could swear he had never seen in his entire fucking life.

“Hey, buddy,” he said, turning on the charm again because honestly, Jonah was far more malleable than Amy.

“Hey, Dan,” Jonah barely grunted. He was pretty good at holding a grudge lately, and that could get in the way.

“Do you think you could maybe give me a ride home?” he asked, going straight for the gold, because honestly in this mood Jonah would probably sense he was being manipulated.

“Yeah, whatever. I’ll find you when I wanna leave.”

Dan smiled at him and walked away. Honestly, he couldn’t tell why it bothered him so much when Jonah acted wounded. He was still driving him home; he still smoked those bowls with him. Everything Dan wanted from the situation, he still got. So what did he care if Jonah was a pissbaby in the meantime?

He didn’t. Or at least, he shouldn’t. He stalked off, hunting for another beer. He didn’t care.

 

It was just about dusk when they pulled out of the parking lot in Jonah’s beat-up black Saab. Jonah drove exactly the way Amy didn’t, all sharp turns and sudden brakes and quick accelerations. Dan clenched his fists, but really it wasn’t too much worse than anything else.

After a few minutes of being tossed around like a baseball, Dan pulled at his seatbelt until it was on childlock. He was sick of his brain rattling in his skull. He glanced at Jonah, but Jonah was resolutely staring at the road. Jonah hadn’t turned the radio on before starting to drive, and coffee cups littered the floor, which meant that Jonah usually fiddled with the radio or drank coffee. He was not usually laser-focus man, so he must have been deliberately ignoring Dan. Well, fine. He liked the silence anyway. He stared out the windshield. There was something pleasant about seeing a wooded road go by at dusk. The streetlights had just come on.

“You’re a dick.”

Dan was jerked out of his quiet contemplation. He looked over at Jonah, who was staring straight ahead still, as if he hadn’t spoken.

“Am I?” he asked, watching Jonah carefully.

Jonah swallowed and jerked his head a little, an angry involuntary nod. It seemed like he was building up to saying something, but seriously it was taking too long.

“Just spit it out, Jonah.”

Jonah looked his way for a second, then back at the road.

“Dan, don’t act like you don’t fucking know what’s going on. This whole thing only worked because everyone walked on fucking tiptoes. And you…I don’t know, _hopscotched_ all over it and now you’re trying to play it like none of this ever happened.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Jonah?” Dan asked. “What _whole thing_?”

“The whole thing where we’re not friends anymore but you and Amy still have your little thing going on and we still get stoned every time you’re too, I don’t know, tired or whatever to see your real friends.” Jonah usually talked with his hands, and Dan could see the gestures trying to form themselves on the steering wheel as he spoke.

“Amy and I don’t have a _little thing_ going on.”

“Whatever, Dan. The point is you had to go and fuck it up and now you’re acting like everything’s the same as it has been for the past four years.”

“How did I fuck it up? I haven’t done anything to you, Jonah.” Dan was sick of this vague bullshit—how was he supposed to defend himself against a phantom attack? “It’s not my fault you don’t have any other people who will watch South Park with you.”

“Fuck you, Dan.” Jonah settled back in his seat like he was done, but Dan was nowhere near finished.

“No, you don’t get to fucking end this here. What did I do to fuck up this dynamic so bad?”

“How about talking about how we all used to be friends?” Jonah snapped.

“Oh well, of course, excuse me, I’d forgotten I wasn’t allowed to talk about the first twelve years of our lives. How could I?”

“How about having a fucking panic attack in Amy’s car?” Jonah continued as if he hadn’t heard Dan.

“It wasn’t—“ Dan started.

“I googled the symptoms, it was a fucking panic attack, I’m not an idiot.”

“I didn’t ask for Amy’s help that night. Or yours, asshole.” Dan leaned back in his seat. Arguments in cars were supposed to be easy, he’d read in some stupid clickbait article, because you don’t have to make eye contact, which makes it easier for most people to say shitty things. But eye contact had never stopped Dan there, and not being able to see Jonah put him at a disadvantage, because he couldn’t read the attack.

“Yeah well for some reason Amy decided to help you anyway, and she never has before.” Jonah said. “So what do you think about that?”

“I think that I haven’t heard Amy complain,” Dan said.

“Yeah because Amy shows weakness,” Jonah said sarcastically. “Plus, you didn’t see her face on the way back from that fucking party.”

“I didn’t do anything to Amy. I got a ride home from her once is all. That’s nothing.”

“You told me you talked about your parents,” Jonah said.

“What is this fucking deal you have with never speaking of the fact that we grew up together?” Dan asked incredulously. “We did, it happened. Grow up.”

“Oh, like I made these rules.” On that, both of Jonah’s hands did leave the steering wheel. Dan ducked on instinct—Jonah’s arms were so long, and he wasn’t exactly the most aware of his body. But Jonah snapped his hands back to the wheel almost automatically.

“What rules?” Dan was honestly confused.

Jonah shook his head. “When was the last time, before that drive home, that you or me or Amy acknowledged that we were anything more than neighbors?”

Dan didn’t answer. They had turned onto their street. Dan watched the familiar houses tick by, and felt something settle in his stomach. He turned in his seat to face Jonah.

“Look, Jonah, Amy would have helped me at that party no matter what. We talked about our parents for all of twenty seconds in the car. This isn’t about Amy.” Dan kept his voice low. “This is about you, and that’s fine, but let’s not play games.”

Jonah pulled into his driveway and stopped the car, but didn’t move to get out. Dan suddenly felt very uncomfortable in the enclosed space.

“Fine, Dan. It is about me.” Jonah was still facing forward. “You come over and smoke my weed and hang out with me like it’s no big deal, and then you go back to ignoring me and making fun of me with your friends—“

“My friends don’t make fun of you that much,” Dan interjected, as if it mattered.

“And you know, I deal with it, because what’s it to me?” Jonah finally turned to face Dan. “You need someone to hang out with and whatever, I don’t mind, it’s not like I’m telling you my secrets or shit like that.”

He pauses, and Dan watches him fumble for what he’s trying to say.

“But then you have to be all _isn’t it weird that we’re not friends now_ which, by the way, I was thinking when we were twelve and I woke up one morning and we weren’t friends anymore.”

“Really, you’re gonna whine about—“

“Shut up, Dan. I’m just saying, there’s a reason we don’t talk about it. You’re right, it happened, but it didn’t end because _I_ wanted it to, and you fucking know that. You can talk history if you want, but don’t fucking rewrite it. You and Amy got to be cool and successful and you’re living the fucking dream, and I…” he stopped. “I know what people think of me.”

Dan raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

“You fucking won high school, Dan, okay. I thought we would just never mention it, and go our own separate ways for college, and that would be fucking fine with me. But you bring it up, and for a second I think maybe you’re more than subhuman, that you actually want things to change or something. But nope. You’ve taken every opportunity since to be a fucking dick to me, even after I took care of you at that goddamn party.”

“I have not taken every opportunity,” Dan snapped.

“Most, then,” Jonah shot back.

Dan had to let him have that one. “Okay, so.”

“So I’m not the one who got all nostalgic. Where do you get off acting like I wounded you?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Jonah, what the fuck do you want from me here?”

Jonah shrank back in his seat a little, and his shoulders came forward in a shrug. He opened his mouth, but Dan had had enough.

“Right,” he said, opening the door. He crossed in front of the car without looking back at Jonah and crossed his lawn to the front door. Dinner was waiting anyway. 


	5. Give It Up, Throw Your Hats In The Air

He almost went out again. He was done with high school, for good, and it felt stupid to have celebrated it by being yelled at in Jonah’s car then eating dinner with his fucking family. He almost took the car and went back to school, or texted one of the guys to see where they’d relocated to if they hadn’t been busted yet.

But he was graduating high school tomorrow. He wanted a night to reflect on that. He wanted a night to honestly think about what he had gotten from high school, because he was beyond ready to move on, and this whole goddamn experience had better have been worth something.

He settled down at his computer, and opened the “Plans” file on his hard drive. He opened the file labeled “college” and looked over it. He copied it, and created a new document, then separated it into two columns. Goals and Skills.

Goals: Duke, PolySci Major, Pi Kappa Alpha, 4.0, Governmental Internship

Skills: AP US Government and Politics, AP Macroeconomics, AP English Language and Composition, Schmoozing, Flirting, High Bullshit Tolerance.

That didn’t look particularly promising. He closed his computer and got into bed.

 

The thing about graduation was that it was long. It was long, and it was getting warm in this fucking cap and gown. Amy’s speech was the only thing Dan was interested in, aside from getting handed his diploma, and that was at least coming up, but Jesus Christ why was this ceremony taking so long? Couldn’t they sense that all Dan wanted to do was get the fuck out of high school?

Apparently not, because it went on and on and on. After what felt like a year, Amy was up there, and Dan snapped to attention. It was five minutes of calm collected Amy pontificating on how achievements had to be achieved, how the only way to success was through continued excellence and hard work, and Dan was pretty sure he caught an Aaron Sorkin reference in there, so all-in-all exactly what one would expect of Amy. It was a great speech—engaging, witty, charming, and Amy someone managed to look amazing even in a graduation cap. If Dan didn’t agree with the essential message she was giving, he could look past that for now. He settled back in his seat when she was done. It wasn’t time to walk yet, and who gave a shit about the salutatorian anyway? He stuck his hand in his robe and pulled his phone from his pocket.

Dan fully intended to not look up from his game of Tetris until his row stood up to walk, but when he heard the name “Amy Brookheimer” he looked up in spite of himself.  She was poised as ever when she took her diploma, but he caught a smile as she moved her tassel. He stowed his phone back in his pocket. After all, he was coming up soon.

It wasn’t a big affair. He took the diploma, said thank you, paused for about a millisecond as if his parents were taking pictures, flicked the tassel from one side to the other, and returned to his seat. He pulled his phone out again, because honestly this was such a pointless fucking ritual and he was beyond fed up already.

He didn’t look up again until he heard “Jonah Ryan.” And even then, he didn’t mean to do it, it was just instinct. Jonah walked across the stage all limbs, with the same pained look on his face as always, and Dan felt an unexpected twinge. Jonah was graduating without friends, without prospects, without much really. And he knew it, too. Jonah was in more of a shithole than Dan was, and Dan really had fucked him over lately. And maybe…it wasn’t going to make a fucking difference to go back and decide who hurt who when they were kids, but Jonah probably had a point. Dan had been a shit the past few weeks, and it wouldn’t hurt to make some amends. He shook his head. Fucking graduation goggles. Got him in some kind of fucked-up state. But he might as well just go with it.

 

After the ceremony, everyone’s parents were running around taking pictures, and even Dan was posing with his family. His mother even got a little weepy when his kid brother David pulled Dan’s cap off and put it on his own head. Dan was doing the typical smiley, familial, public face when his eye caught on Jonah’s family doing much the same thing a couple hundred yards away. He craned his neck until he found Amy in the crowd, smiling stiffly with Ed’s arm around her waist as her mother snapped a picture, and he gestured at her until she noticed him.

After a few minutes, her whole family had migrated over and their parents were exchanging pleasantries.

“Do you wanna get a picture of us and Jonah?” Dan asked her, low under his breath.

Amy looked up at him, eyes wide, mouth smiling. “When did the nostalgia bug bite you?” she asked, incredulous.

Dan shrugged.

“Okay,” she agreed. “Why not, I guess?”

“Jonah!” Dan called across the quad through his hands. Jonah turned and saw them. Dan gestured for him to come over, and he did, slowly, his parents following behind.

“I thought it’d be—“ Dan stumbled. Amy turned to look at him. “I thought it might be nice to get a picture of the three of us.”

Jonah’s face was actually hard to read. He cast a glance to his parents, now happily ensconced with Dan’s and Amy’s. He nodded, with a look at Dan that Dan still couldn’t figure out.

“Hey, Mom!” Amy called. “Can you get a picture?”

The three of them stood together in an awkward huddle, Amy in the middle, Jonah bending his knees to make the picture a little easier. They smiled. Three different cameras took the picture and three different sets of parents cooed.

“Look at how far our babies have come,” Mrs. Ryan said, turning to the others.

“Jesus,” Jonah muttered under his breath.

“We made it, guys,” Dan said, and held his hand out for a high-five to Jonah. Jonah met it, and Dan threw an arm around Amy in a sort of half side hug.

They turned to look at their group—the six parents talking and laughing, David and Sophie standing awkward distance from each other chatting uncomfortably, Ed around the edges, looking down at his phone.

Amy sighed. “I should…” she gestured towards Ed. “I told him not to come.” She headed off in his direction, leaving Dan and Jonah standing together.

“So, you going to the party tonight?” Dan asked.

“Do we have a choice?” Jonah looked at Amy and Ed, at their parents, seemingly anywhere but Dan.

“No, I guess not.” There was a pause. “It’s probably gonna suck, huh?”

“Usually school-sponsored events designed to keep you from driving drunk do,” Jonah said. He didn’t seem all too eager to be having this conversation. Dan didn’t know what else to fucking do. Maybe later, Jonah would be ready to not be a baby.

“Well, see you there,” Dan said, then moved to extricate his parents from the bunch.

 

It wasn’t too bad, for a school-sponsored party. They had clearly wanted the newly graduated seniors to feel like they were getting the full experience. Which they were, although the school wasn’t exactly aware of that. Dan wasn’t sure who had snuck in what or how, but he had a nice buzz going as he looked out over the sea of other ex-students. Which was good, because he had no interest in being here otherwise. He’d had some good times in high school, but that chapter of his life had ended—he checked his watch—seven hours ago, and being stuck in the gym all night with every single plot point from that chapter would be a lot. But as long as he had a nice drunk going or on its way, he was fine with it. One last night.

Realistically he knew he would probably see the guys over the summer, because otherwise he’d be so bored he’d want to slit his wrists, but when lacrosse season had ended it had been interesting to see just how little he cared about his teammates. So who knew? Maybe he’d get a summer job. He had looked before, obviously, but there wasn’t anything that would be useful to his résumé, and he would rather kill himself than work in the service industry. But maybe his dad would know someone looking for an intern or something…

Dan shook his head. Now was not the time to be thinking about serious matters. Now was the time for fun.

He saw Amy standing alone by the punch bowl, looking at her phone, and made a beeline for her.

“Hey, Ames!” he said, maybe a little too loudly.

“Hey, Dan,” she said without looking up.

“Amyyyyyy, don’t you wanna have a little fun?” he asked. “We’re done with high school, we made it through!”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m just looking at the requirements for the bridge program I’m doing.”

“You’re doing a bridge program?”

“Yeah, a poly-sci thing.” She still didn’t look up at him.

He tugged on her arm. “Look at the requirements tomorrow, Amy. This is your last chance to live in high school!”

“Thank fucking god for that,” she said, but she pocketed her phone and scooped out some punch for herself. “So.” She tilted her head to the right. “You haven’t told me if you liked my speech.”

Dan looked at her. She was smiling at him with false innocence.

“It was fine,” he said. “Mine would have been better.”

“Yeah, I think I remember you saying the same thing about your GPA.” One thing about Amy was that she always knew how to hit back.

“Really, though, Amy? Hard work will save us all? The only thing you need is a good strong work ethic?” Dan took a fruit skewer from the tray next to the punch bowl and bit a grape off the top.

“Yeah, Dan. Funny enough, pure evil doesn’t get you very far in life.” She took a sip of her punch and made a face. “Jesus that’s bad. Who spiked it with what?”

Dan shrugged. “You know, pure evil’s worked pretty well for me so far.”

Amy smiled. “Good enough for second place.” She tilted her glass towards him before taking another sip.

He smiled at her and ate a piece of melon off the skewer.

“Hey, Amy!”

Amy and Dan both turned to look, and saw Jonah coming towards them.

“I forgot to mention it before, but great speech,” he said, coming to a stop a little closer to Amy than was necessary.

“Thanks, Jonah,” Amy said, shooting Dan a pointed look and shifting ever so slightly away from Jonah. “We were just talking about it, actually.”

Dan grabbed another fruit skewer. “Want some fruit, buddy?” He held it out to Jonah.

Jonah took it hesitantly, glancing between Amy and Dan. “What’d I just walk into here?”

“Nothing, Jonah,” Amy said. “Have some terrible punch.”

Jonah shrugged and got some punch. “You guys glad to be done with high school?”

Dan and Amy made noises of assent, and Jonah grinned.

“In the morning we will leave this campus and I for one will never fucking come back,” Dan said.

“What about for reunions?” Jonah asked.

Dan looked at him, eyebrows raised. “Why would I do that, Jonah?”

“I don’t know,” Jonah said. “Don’t you want to rub it in these smug assholes’ faces when you’re somebody?”

“Oh, they know I’ll be somebody,” Dan responded smoothly, with his customary charming smile. He noticed Jonah’s grin stutter a bit. Right. Well they fucking did. It wasn’t his fault.

“Well, we don’t have to worry about that for another ten years anyway,” Amy said in that final voice of hers.

“Thank Jesus,” Dan added. He ate a strawberry off the skewer.

“We should toast,” he said, and scooped himself a cup of punch, then raised it. “To us. We made it through hell. Let’s just hope there’s something better on the other side.”

He knocked his cup into Amy’s and Jonah’s in turn, then took a sip. “Fuck, this really is bad.”

Amy and Jonah laughed.

 

 

Dan would have loved to spend Sunday sleeping and looking for summer opportunities (because seriously, if Amy was doing a pre-college program what the fuck was he doing sitting on his ass all summer?) so when his parents dragged him out of bed at noon for “Jonah’s graduation party” and “didn’t we tell you about this?” he wasn’t exactly over the moon, especially running on the three hours of sleep he’d gotten.

He refused to dress up for what turned out to be a glorified block party, and when he came outside in jeans and a grey t-shirt, he found that the sun had come out in full force, making it almost too hot, but ideal barbecue weather.

The party was mostly in the Ryans’ front yard, so he headed over, hoping to God he wouldn’t have to endure too many hours of small talk with neighbors he barely knew. He wandered into the crowd of mingling middle-aged people. He saw Jonah over by the grill, but he was surrounded by what looked like family, so Dan stayed back. If Amy wasn’t there, he was going to sit in a quiet corner on some grass with his goddamn phone, parents be damned. He wandered through the yard a little, and when he didn’t see her, went off in search of such a corner.

Of course when he found one that’s where Amy was—one hand holding a plate with some potato salad and a couple chips on it, the other holding her phone up to her face, sitting with both legs tucked to her left, in a yellow dress that he was 9000% sure she had not picked out for herself.

“Great minds,” he said, pointing at his own phone and settling down next to her.

Amy looked up from her phone. “Great minds? Who else is here?”

Dan rolled his eyes. “Hilarious.”

He bent to look over her shoulder. “Requirements for your bridge program?” he asked.

“Please, I finished that this morning.”

“Did you sleep at all?” he asked, angling his head to look at her face instead.

She shook her head, still looking at her phone.

“Jesus.” Funny, she didn’t look to him like she’d been up all night. No dark circles, eyes bright, hair as flawless as always. Then again, makeup.

“So what are you doing?” he asked, turning back to her phone’s screen.

“Reading the news,” she answered.

Dan scoffed. “The news?”

“Yes, Dan,” she responded as if she were talking to a small child. “Some people like to be aware of what’s going on in the world.”

Dan didn’t really have a comeback for that. Why was it that Amy was always so many steps ahead of him lately? She was so much more prepared than he was, for college, for life as a successful what-the-fuck-ever she wanted to do (although he should probably find that out, because she had said something about poly-sci last night and if she had any plans like his, he was going to have to think long and hard about what that meant).

“So, what’s going on in the world?” he asked.

“The Boston Marathon bomber was just given the death penalty.” Amy said it without inflection and without looking up, so Dan had no idea what to say to her in response to that. Was she for the death penalty? Against it? Jesus, what was the good in having flexible political opinions if you couldn’t read your adversary? Or, as it were, teammate?

Amy was engrossed in whatever article she was reading, and Dan was about to make a crack about how much fun she must be on a date when he saw Jonah’s head bobbing along above all the others.

“I’m gonna go say hi to Jonah,” he said. “You know, it is his party.”

Amy finally looked up. “I’ll come with you,” she said.

“Really?” he asked.

“Hey, Jonah and I have bonded lately.” Dan raised his eyebrows at her. “Plus I want some more food.”

Dan snaked through the clumps of neighbors after Jonah’s gangly frame.

“Jonah!” he called.

Jonah turned at the food table, and Dan and Amy caught up with him.

“Hey, man, nice party,” Dan said.

“It’s bullshit my parents put on.” Jonah picked up a plate and started ladling potato salad onto it.

“Well, yeah,” Dan said.

“I’m glad you guys came though.”

“Of course,” Amy said, as if her parents hadn’t totally forced her.

Dan grabbed a plate and they all moved down the line. Dan took some potato salad too, and a couple deviled eggs.

“You guys want burgers?” Jonah asked.

“Yeah,” Dan said.

“That’d be great,” Amy added.

“Hey Dad, could you throw on three burgers?” Jonah called. He led them to the little clump of plastic patio chairs that were now empty. They sat.

“So, is a lot of your family here?” Dan gestured vaguely towards the other people in the yard.

“Yeah, some,” Jonah said. “I don’t know why. With my cousins and me it’s like there’s at least three of us graduating from something somewhere every year. I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“I guess not,” Dan said. “Still, it’s probably nice to have them around.”

Jonah shrugged. “Yeah, it’s not bad.”

“I for one am glad my parents are both only children,” Amy said in between bites of potato salad.

“Amy, why are you so hungry?” Dan asked.

She flipped him off but otherwise ignored him. “Seriously, if I had any more family here for this hell, I’d probably kill them all. It’s bad enough having my parents and my sister and Ed all wanting to like, celebrate and reminisce, when I’m just trying to get some fucking work done.”

“What work?” Jonah asked.

“Don’t get her started,” Dan advised under his breath. Amy ignored him again.

“I’ve got a bunch to do for this program I’m doing in August, plus I’m interning at my dad’s firm a couple days a week, and trying to map out a course of study and put a better résumé together.” She took another bite of potato salad. “It’s a pretty light load, but I don’t want to fuck around.”

Jonah leaned back in his chair, his mouth hanging open a little.

“What?” Amy asked.

“Are you ever gonna like, breathe?” Jonah asked.

“Excuse me for having goals in life.”

“Hey.” Dan felt on the defensive there.

“Yeah, hey,” Jonah added.

Amy and Dan both turned to look at him.

“What? Just because I don’t talk about them all the time, suddenly I can’t have goals?” he asked.

Dan and Amy looked at each other.

“Jonah…” Amy started.

“Not every goal requires a four-point-fuck GPA, guys,” he said.

They looked at each other again.

“Seriously.”

“Okay,” Dan put his hands up in surrender.

“Besides which, I’ll have you know my GPA was fine. Better than fine. Fucking spectacular.”

Amy and Dan looked at each other again, not sure how to respond. Fortunately, Jonah’s dad appeared with the burgers just then, and they didn’t have to say anything.

Dan ate his burger slowly, taking his time because really he’d just woken up and good as this burger was, he didn’t want to see it in reverse. Amy was chowing down like there was no tomorrow.

“Okay, seriously Ames, why are you so hungry? You pregnant?” he joked.

“Fuck off,” Amy said with a full mouth.

Jonah put his burger down on the plate, about half of it gone. “You’re a dick, Dan.”

“Thank you, Jonah.” Amy looked up at him and smiled, then flipped Dan off, her hand still holding the burger.

“Wow. You guys cut me deep there,” Dan said. It was time to change the subject. “So, Jonah, what are you doing this summer?”

“Probably just working at the bistro,” Jonah said.

“Really?” Dan asked. Seriously? He didn’t want service industry but the fact that Jonah had a job and he didn’t was a lot for him to handle at once.

“Yeah, I’m a busboy there part-time. I could probably pick up more shifts if I wanted, but I don’t know…it’s the last summer, you know?” He ate a chip.

“Well, you’re probably not at a loss for spending money anyway,” Amy said.

Jonah looked around surreptitiously, then leaned in. “I’m fuckin’ flush. But still, a little more doesn’t hurt.”

“What are you gonna do with all that money, Jonah?” Dan asked.

“Whatever I fucking want, Dan,” Jonah retorted.

Dan was impressed despite himself. His moral code was beyond the gray area, but he had never been interested in selling weed, mostly because, you know, if you get caught, you’re fucked. Good luck getting elected to Congress with an “intention to distribute” on your record. But for someone like Jonah…well. It had its upside. He could see that. Jonah was making things work.

“You two should have a sleaze-off,” Amy said. “I’d be interested to see who came out slimier.”

“I’d worry about your own reputation before mine,” Dan shot back. “After all, you’re the pregnant one.”

Amy met his eyes. “Enough, Dan,” she said.

Dan looked at her for a second. “Holy shit, you’re not actually pregnant, are you?”

“No, asshole,” Amy said. “But shut up.”

Jonah sat back in his seat and took a bite of his burger, smiling widely. Dan stabbed idly at a potato with his plastic fork. Amy checked her phone.


	6. I Just Wanted to Go Out to Eat

Dan put down his JFK biography and sat down on his bed. It was the kind of muggy summer day that he thought shouldn’t come around until August, but here it was a week after graduation, still fucking June, and he didn’t want to step foot outside. He knew he should really go to the gym, but the idea of walking from the house to the car and from the car to the gym, not to mention back to the car all sweaty after his workout made him want to die. It was air-conditioned in the house. Of course, it was also fucking boring in the house, but there was always a tradeoff somewhere.

Maybe he should do some push-ups or planks or abs or something. It seemed a shame to miss a workout because of the goddamn weather. He stood up, fully prepared to drop and do fifty, when he saw Amy’s car pull into her driveway through the window. He watched as she got out, fumbling with her purse and phone as she usually was, and went inside.

Amy probably wasn’t bored. Amy probably had plenty of high-functioning overachieving work to do. And maybe he should too. He’d asked his dad about an internship, and his dad had said he’d look into it. His mom had said she’d ask around too, but Dan could really not stomach working at the hospital, so he was waiting to hear back from his dad. Otherwise, there wasn’t much to do. He had to go dorm shopping or whatever sometime, he guessed, but he still hadn’t really sat down to talk with his parents about the fact that he was leaving for college and all that entailed, and he wasn’t particularly looking forward to that conversation, so he might as well wait. He had a few months to spare anyway.

So he had no responsibilities or commitments, and it ate him up that Amy did. That even Jonah did, with his low-grade busboy job. Dan didn’t function well without a task in front of him, but this had never been a problem before. He had spent other summers away at pre-college programs, volunteering at food pantries, getting SAT tutoring. Hell, he’d gone on a service trip to New Orleans through the local Y trying to get ahead, rebuilding devastated areas. He had been so focused on getting in that he’d never thought what to do when he got in, except go. This time between was killing him. He wanted to be doing something.

But there was nothing he could do right now to solve that (short of going on Craigslist, and he wasn’t that desperate yet), but maybe he could solve his momentary boredom. Amy’s car was still parked in her driveway, and when Dan angled his head a little, he could see that Jonah’s car was in his driveway as well. He pulled his phone out of his pocket.

He dialed Amy first, because she was going to be the hard one to convince.

She answered after two rings, sounding as always like she was in the middle of something. “What’s up, Dan?”

“Hey Ames, I was wondering if you wanted to hang out.” He made sure to turn away from the window, in case she was watching from hers. He didn’t want that awkward girl-next-door 90s teen movie bullshit.

“Right now?” she asked, sounding appalled.

“Yes, Amy, right now,” he said in his most patronizing tone.

“Dan, I have a life you know.”

Dan sat down in his desk chair and turned his head towards the window. “Really? What are you doing right now?”

He heard her sigh, but she didn’t answer.

“Are you organizing the files on your computer?” he asked.

“No,” she snapped.

“I was close though, wasn’t I?” Dan asked, leaning forward in his seat.

Amy was silent for a few seconds, then sighed. “What were you thinking of doing?”

Dan stood up. “I hadn’t really thought that far in advance,” he admitted. “I was just thinking you, me, and Jonah could do something together.”

“Fine,” Amy said. “Why don’t you guys come over here? We can go swimming.”

“Wait, really?” Dan asked.

“Sure, it’s hot as all fuck and we opened the pool a few weeks ago. You’ll call Jonah?”

“Sure,” Dan said. Amy hung up. That had been…weirdly easy. And much as Dan still didn’t want to leave his own air-conditioned house, the idea of a pool was too good to pass up. He scrolled through his contacts and pressed Jonah’s name.

“Yo,” Jonah answered.

“Oh, Jonah. You make it too easy,” Dan said, because honestly he could be friends with Jonah, that was fine, but he wasn’t going to be able to ignore opportunities like that for much longer.

“Hey, Dan.”

“Listen, you wanna come swimming at Amy’s with me?” Dan went straight for the ask, figuring there wasn’t much point in small talk.

“What, now?” Jonah asked.

“Yeah, I’m heading over in a few minutes,” Dan said.

“Sure,” Jonah said.

It was that simple. Within five minutes, Dan and Jonah were walking across the street to Amy’s house with towels over their shoulders. Dan could almost see the heat coming off the concrete. It was June for fuck’s sake.

“Is it just me or is this…” Jonah started.

“Yeah, it’s a little weird,” Dan answered carefully, not wanting to piss Jonah off again.

“Do you remember the last time you were at Amy’s house?” Jonah asked.

Dan thought for a second. “No,” he finally answered.

“Yeah, me neither,” Jonah said.

“I mean, we used to come over all the time after school,” Dan said. “But I don’t remember the last time.”

“Yeah, I guess you never really know when the last time is.” Jonah sounded weirdly sad as they approached Amy’s front door. Dan nudged his arm with his shoulder.

“Well, clearly it wasn’t the last time,” he said as he pushed the doorbell.

 

Amy’s mom led them through the house (and it was exactly as Dan remembered it, everything clean and polished and new-looking) out to the patio. They thanked her as they walked through the sliding glass doors to the pool. Amy was sitting in the shade of an umbrella, wearing sunglasses and an oversized button-down over her bathing suit like Audrey Hepburn or something. Except Audrey Hepburn wouldn’t have been staring at her cell phone.

“What’s going on in the world today, Amy?”

“ISIS has gained control of Ramadi,” she said without looking up.

Jonah looked at Dan questioningly.

“She’s reading the news,” Dan muttered to him.

“My mom put out lemonade,” Amy said, gesturing to the table next to her, where there was in fact a pitcher of lemonade and some empty glasses. There was also a bowl of tortilla chips, and a smaller bowl of salsa. Amy’s mom hadn’t changed, Dan thought. She’d always been a Mom with a capital M—serving them graham crackers and apple juice after school as kids, always something baking or cooking. She handled hospitality the way a lawyer handled the law.

Jonah was at the table in a heartbeat, pouring himself a glass and drinking it noisily. Dan stayed back—he was far too hot to think about going anywhere but the pool just yet.

“Can I go in?” he asked, a little unsure. Amy hadn’t moved from her position and he didn’t really remember what swimming pool etiquette was.

“Yeah, sure,” Amy said. “I’ll be in in a second, I just want to finish this article.”

Dan put his towel and phone down on one of the deck chairs and pulled his t-shirt off, feeling strangely self-conscious. He walked over to the diving board slowly, and stood there contemplating the water.

Jonah settled down next to Amy under the umbrella, still eating chips. Amy put her phone down and took a chip as well. Dan smiled, and dove smoothly into the water. Instant relief. He stayed under without moving for a moment and just let the coolness of the water rush over his skin. Jesus that was good. He swam out to the shallow end before he surfaced. The hot air hit him again, like everything above the water was soaked in honey or molasses or something thick like that, and only the thin layer of water still clinging to him served as a shield.

“You guys, this water is a fucking liquid orgasm,” he said as he surfaced.

Amy paused, a salsa-covered chip halfway to her mouth. “Your response to experiencing an orgasm is to say _that was an orgasm_?”

Dan swam up to the edge of the pool close to Amy and put his head on his hands, smiling up at her with that smile he reserved for his best flirting action. “Would you like to find out?”

“Oooh,” Jonah chuckled.

Amy took her sunglasses off, stood up, then bent down to about Dan’s level. Dan had no fucking idea what was about to happen and was suddenly very uncomfortable with it. He made eye contact with Jonah, who was frozen, mouth open in an uncomfortable smile.

Dan looked at Amy and drew back so he was hanging onto the edge with only his hands. What had he just started? He felt suddenly very nervous, and what the fuck was Amy doing, and was she going to fucking kiss him just to win a game of asshole chicken, this wasn’t what he’d wanted, holy shit this was not the plan.

And then she planted her hand firmly on the top of his head and pushed.

He could have resisted, but honestly it was a lot less confusing to just go under for a second, so he acquiesced, and came up only sputtering a little bit a second later, to be greeted with an explosion of Jonah’s laughter.

Amy was still crouched down by the edge of the pool. “Fuck off, Dan,” she said sweetly, maintaining eye contact. Dan couldn’t help thinking that that had been an awful lot of vitriol for a poorly delivered innuendo. He didn’t think he deserved that much. So quickly, before the moment had a chance to pass, he grabbed her arm and pulled.

“Don’t you—“ she said, as she pulled back. But he had caught her off guard, and she splashed into the pool, shirt still on. Jonah smiled at him and nodded, impressed. Amy came back up, gasping for breath.

“That is not going to be okay, Dan,” she said, struggling to the shallow end. Her shirt was clinging to her in a way that Dan didn’t want to find as appealing as he did, and he was a little bit relieved when she peeled it off and laid it out by the edge of the pool to dry. Then she crossed back into the deep end and stretched out with her back against the edge across from Dan, her arms spread out behind her, supporting her.

“Okay, first of all, fuck you, Dan,” she said, once she was properly settled. “But second of all, it’s worth admitting that this water is incredible.”

Dan grinned and turned to face Jonah. “You comin’ in?”

Jonah ate another chip, stood up, pulled his shirt off, and headed for the ladder.

“Are you too fucking tall to jump?” Dan asked, amused. Jonah idly flipped him off in lieu of answering. Dan laughed.

“Oh sweet lord this water is the love of my life,” Jonah said, as he waded in.

“Don’t tell your hand,” Dan cracked. Jonah gave him a look, then went under all the way.

“Cool it with the sex jokes, Dan,” Amy told him. “We’re not the fucking lacrosse team.”

Jonah resurfaced.

“You’re not?” Dan asked. “Oh, you know what, it must have been the warm welcome, it got me confused, sorry.”

Jonah looked between Amy and Dan.

“Yeah, right, sorry, I should have yelled your name and thrown beer on you when you got here,” Amy leaned her head back and closed her eyes in the sunlight.

“What did I miss?” Jonah asked.

“Nothing,” Dan assured him. “Amy’s just flirting with me.”

“Oh my god,” Amy said, more to herself than to either of them.

Jonah grinned.

 

Dan had forgotten exactly what you do in a pool. Or maybe he’d just grown up—back when they were kids, he could remember some marco polo, some diving for pennies, and turf wars over the corner with the filter, as if that was somehow desirable territory. Somehow he didn’t see any of those going over well now—not that he was particularly interested in them either.

But anything was better than the awkwardness that had overtaken them since they’d first gotten in the pool. He had felt relieved to discover there was still a rapport there, but he hadn’t really thought much further, and he was finding now that a rapport does not make for a conversation if you have no topics to draw from. Not that he should be the only one making a fucking effort, but he had instigated this gathering and it seemed like nobody else gave much notice to the fact that they were sitting in silence in a damn swimming pool.

“When do you start interning, Amy?” he asked, desperate enough for something to latch onto that he would even let Amy walk all over him with her summer success.

“Hmm?” Amy jerked her head out of its patch of sun. Had she been asleep? Or in a trance? “Oh, next week.”

“What are you gonna be doing?” Jonah asked from his seated position on the ladder, as if he was actually interested. Dan thanked God in his head.

“I don’t know yet. Probably just filing or whatever,” she leaned her head back into the sunlight again. “It’s not like I really want to work at a law firm, but…”

“The ol’ résumé packer,” Jonah said in an affected voice, grinning.

“Yup.” Amy kept her eyes closed. She seemed to be really enjoying that patch of sunlight.

“What about you, Jonah? Have you started work yet?” Dan asked, still reaching, because he was feeling the weight of every lull in the conversation.

“Yeah, I mean, I work there all year so…” Jonah said.

“Right.” Dan had nowhere left to go, so he started swimming. He immersed himself and swam the length of the pool, then came back up for air and swam back. When he looked up, Amy’s eyes were following him.

“What are _you_ doing this summer, Dan?” she asked, and Dan’s stomach dropped to the bottom of the pool. Someone was going to have to dive for that later. He hoped there was a pair of goggles around.

“Oh, you know, I’ve got a few things going on,” he hedged.

“Like what?” she asked. She was doing this on purpose. Logically, he knew that she probably wasn’t, and that he had invited this line of questioning by raising it with them, but still. She was doing this on purpose.

“Yeah, you haven’t mentioned anything,” Jonah said, suddenly curious. Jonah wasn’t doing it on purpose; he didn’t have the conniving competitiveness in him. But still.

“Nothing’s really set in stone yet,” he said, as smoothly as he could manage. “So I’d rather not jinx anything if you don’t mind.”

Amy rolled her eyes, but Jonah nodded as though that were entirely reasonable. Dan climbed out of the pool, grabbed his towel, and started drying off as he ambled to the table and grabbed a chip.

“Jesus this is good salsa,” he said to the silence. No response. Well, what were they supposed to say?

 

When he and Jonah finally shut the front door behind them in the dim twilight and started across the lawn, Dan was exhausted. He couldn’t remember the last time a social event had taken that much energy on his part just to maintain. The silences had felt dangerously long, and he could swear that every time he tried to find a new topic of conversation, Amy and Jonah were laughing at him under their breath.

They had gotten on a roll somewhere in there talking shit about the prom (because really who thought that DJ was a good idea?) and another debating affirmative action of all things, and there had been a few good moments of reminiscing. All in all, it had probably gone well, but Dan was just tired.

“See you around, man,” he said to Jonah as they crossed the street and he stepped onto his lawn.

“Yeah,” Jonah said.

Dan was halfway to his door when he heard Jonah again.

“Hey, Dan?”

Dan turned wearily.

“Thanks for inviting me,” Jonah said, shifting from one foot to the other.

Dan nodded. “Anytime, Jonah,” he said. And he meant it. Jonah was…well, Jonah. But with just Amy, it would be a day of escalating insults, of this weird aggressive banter that may or may not have been sexual tension. Jonah grounded them. It was a delicate balance that Dan had grown to appreciate greatly over the course of the day.

Jonah nodded, and headed towards his house. Dan half-smiled and resumed walking to his own.


	7. Well I Made My Way Back Down to the Valley

 

The summer unfolded in a series of uncomplicated days. Dan’s father hadn’t found him an internship, but had surprised him with a beat-up old Jeep as a graduation gift, so Dan found himself driving a lot. He struck a deal with his mom that he would run her errands if she paid for his gas, and he quickly realized he was spending more time in his car than he was in his house. He drove to and from the gym, and the library, and when there wasn’t anything else to do, he just drove.

He and Jonah had covered the lower leg of the state highway one day before picking Amy up from her office. They had fallen into a kind of rhythm—spending most days together. The conversation had fallen into place as well—nothing too serious most of the time, light bickering and playful banter. Jonah, it turned out, had a habit of summarizing things—movies, books, TV episodes. It was pretty obnoxious on its own, but it filled up the silence, and paired with the dusky sky on the road, it wasn’t that bad. At least not to Dan. Amy hated it. Amy liked to argue with Dan—forcing him to oppose her in an argument regardless of his actual opinions, like they were back in debate.

It was comfortable. Quiet and nostalgic in the heavy summer air. It felt like bookends to Dan. High school was over, for good. And here was this stretch between two phases of his life, and he was spending it with these people from his past. It felt strangely right.

The days blurred into each other—a haze of backgrounds and sunsets and poolside chats and s’mores in Jonah’s backyard. Dan threw himself into the summer the way he threw himself into schoolwork—full-body and no looking back.

 

“So what, I just inhale until…”

“Until you feel like you can’t anymore. Then you lift your finger up,” Jonah patiently explained.

It was 10:30 on a Wednesday night and the sky above them was a deep blue sprinkled with stars. Amy was sitting on the swing that was usually Dan’s, while Jonah sat on his, packing a bowl. Dan stood facing them, holding Jonah’s phone for light as he usually did.

“And then I—?” Amy started to ask.

“You inhale again to make sure it really goes into your lungs.” Jonah finished packing the bowl and held it up for Dan to inspect. Dan nodded.

“And then I exhale?” she asked.

Dan snorted. “Yes, Amy. And after that, you inhale again, and exhale again, and that’s called breathing.”

“Fuck you, Dan.” She leaned forward to see him. “Just because I’m not a fucking stoner.”

Dan smiled. It was cute how Amy was memorizing the steps of smoking weed—the same way she’d memorized the steps of long division when they were kids.

“What if I cough?” she asked.

“Then you’ll die,” Dan said with a straight face.

Jonah swatted at his arm. “We have water you can drink. Coughing is good. It means it’s gotten into your lungs. You probably will cough.”

“Okay, Dad,” Dan cracked.

“Dan still coughs a lot pretty much every time he smokes,” Jonah said, ignoring him.

“Excuse me,” Dan said.

“You’re excused,” Amy simpered up at him.

“Whatever.” Dan grimaced. “You probably won’t even get high.”

Amy looked at Jonah, who shrugged. “You might not. Some people don’t their first time.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “Like I’m gonna do this again.”

Jonah held his hand out for his phone. Dan handed it to him.

“Do you have your lighter, Dan?” Jonah asked.

“You have my lighter, Jonah.”

“What?”

“You never gave it back to me, you should still have it,” Dan said, an edge to his voice. If Jonah had lost his lighter…well, it wasn’t actually that big a deal, it was like a three-dollar lighter, but losing his lighter would be a classic Jonah move.

Jonah handed Dan the pipe and reached into his pocket. “Here it is,” he said.

Dan handed him back the pipe and looked up at the sky. It was warm out—he wasn’t even wearing a sweater over his blue t-shirt. There was a little bit of a breeze, but nothing he couldn’t handle.

“You ready, Amy?” Jonah asked, after taking his first hit.

“Dan can go first,” she said in a smaller voice than usual.

Dan shrugged, and took the pipe. He inhaled without coughing—thank god for small miracles, then handed it to Amy.

“You wanna do it now,” he said. “This bowl isn’t huge and your first hit you don’t want ash.”

She took the pipe and held it to her mouth apprehensively.

“Honestly Amy you’ve faced worse than a hit of weed,” Dan snapped. “I’ll light you.”

Jonah handed him the lighter, and he made sure Amy’s finger was over the hole before he lit.

“Inhale now,” he said, and she did.

She lasted surprisingly long before she let up, and she started coughing almost immediately. Jonah handed her the water and took the pipe from her.

“Fuck you both,” Amy wheezed through her coughing. Dan chuckled and took the pipe from Jonah. He listened to Amy cough as he inhaled. The taste of weed wasn’t exactly pleasant—never had been. But he’d grown accustomed enough to it, and with the hot summer air around him, and Amy’s cough in his ears, something felt right about the night. He exhaled.

Amy stopped coughing. “That was fucking terrible, I’m not doing that again.”

Dan shrugged. “You won’t get high if you don’t take another hit,” he said. “It’s up to you, but if you’ve already been through the hell, wouldn’t you want to at least get the job done?”

Amy sighed and held her hand out for the pipe. Dan passed it to her.

Jonah lit her, grinning at Dan as he did.

She coughed less this time. Jonah examined the bowl when she passed it back, took a hit, and dumped it.

“Another?” Dan asked.

Jonah nodded. “Yeah, two hits won’t get her high.”

“Are you sure?” Amy asked, staring ahead, her mouth slightly open and her eyes unfocused. “I feel…something. I don’t know, but—”

“Amy?” Dan asked. She looked at him. “You know those freshman girls who have a half a wine cooler at the first party they go to and stumble around giggling the rest of the night?”

“Placebo drunks?” she asked, smiling faintly, leaning her head against the chain of her swing.

“You right now.”

She sat up straight. “No.”

Dan nodded. Jonah chuckled and nodded too as he turned the flashlight on his phone and handed it to Dan.

“Take it back, Dan.”

“Look at how sober you suddenly are!” he said.

“Pack another fucking bowl, I’m ready, I’m not high.” She stood up and started pacing.

“Amy, it’s okay, Dan’s just giving you shit.” Jonah said, packing the bowl. “You might even get high off those two hits. It’ll just take a little longer to kick in than that.”

“Whatever Jonah, give me more drugs,” she snapped.

“Jesus,” Jonah muttered under his breath. Dan laughed.

 

“These chips are incredible.”

Amy was laying on her back on Jonah’s bed, parallel to his pillows. She was shoving the salt and pepper chips in her mouth in an altogether undignified way, Dan thought, but also it was more than a little amusing to watch.

“Seriously, these chips…are like…if I could come up with my ideal food, and then break it into a thousand pieces…those pieces would be these chips.”

Dan was lying on his stomach next to her, and he laughed. “Hey Jonah, how many bags do you have of those chips?” he asked. “Amy might need more.”

“I’ve got plenty,” Jonah said from the floor, where he was lying facedown like a dead body.

“Are you okay, man?” Dan asked.

“This is just a lot,” Jonah said. “But I’m good.”

“Okay,” Dan said, turning his attention back to Amy, who was making small happy noises as she ate her chips. Dan wasn't sure if it was that he hadn't gotten many good hits or if he was just unaccustomed to being one of the more seasoned smokers in the room, but the more he watched her the less high he felt.

"Seriously Dan, have you tried these chips?" She asked him without moving her head to look at him.

"Yes, Amy, I have," Dan responded patiently (because high Amy was surprisingly easy to get along with.) "They're very good."

"They're so good," she agreed, again. "Better than sex."

Jonah spoke up from his place on the floor: "I don't know if they're quite that good, Ames."

Dan smiled. The nickname had stuck lately, and, like a lot of other things about this summer, felt oddly right.

"They are though," she insisted.

"Maybe the sex you've had," Dan said without looking up, in the smug voice he tended to use with the lacrosse team. It felt strangely foreign in his mouth tonight, though it had only been weeks since he had last spoken to the guys.

Amy didn't say anything. Dan turned to look at her, because normal Amy would not let that comment slide. Although normal Amy wouldn't have brought up sex to begin with, so maybe he shouldn't bank on anything normal coming from Amy when she was high.

She was staring up at the ceiling still, but he could see that she was chewing on her lower lip, which he had seen her do in case prep for debate--when she was thinking hard about something. This was probably going to be good.

Jonah sighed loudly from the floor, and Dan leaned over to check on him. He was still lying on his stomach, but he'd propped himself up on his elbows now and was tracing patterns in the carpet like a child. Dan leaned back onto the bed and looked down at his own hands, waiting for Amy to speak.

It felt like a long time to Dan, several minutes at least, but it probably could have been less, when she finally did.

"Dan?" Her voice was small and timid, and Dan suddenly felt nervous.

"Yeah, Ames?"

"Did you sleep with Jackson?"

Dan almost laughed. He was this close to bursting into peals of laughter when he sensed the serious note to Amy's voice, when he saw that she had turned to look at him, to study him, like there was something worthwhile in his answer.

"No," he said quietly. "No, we just made out a few times."

"Oh," she responded, her voice still small. She sounded disappointed, or at least unfulfilled, and Dan didn't think she would press the point, so he decided to take charge.

"What's up, Ames?"

Amy turned away from him, looking up at the ceiling again. "No, I was just curious," she said, walls back up, defenses on.

"About Dan's sex life?" Jonah asked from the floor.

"No, I just..." She trailed off and it seemed an eternity before she picked up again. It was certainly long enough for the blush in her cheeks to fade. "I was just wondering if you'd ever actually slept with a guy."

"Oh," Dan said. "Yeah. Actually you know that kid from the E-Town debate team? The one with the floppy hair?"

"Really?" Amy asked.

"Yup," Dan confirmed smugly, because hey, that guy had been hot as hell and Amy sounded impressed. "But why do you ask?"

Amy rolled onto her stomach and buried her face firmly in the crook of her arms. When she answered, it was so muffled that he couldn’t make out a word of it.

“Amy, I don’t know what you just said.”

She picked her head up and stared straight ahead at Jonah’s window—blinds drawn as they usually were. “Well, I know you slept with Selina last year before she graduated,” she said.

“Yeah,” Dan said carefully. Not that he’d really expected that to be a secret, or that he was ashamed, but hearing anything about sex from Amy was such foreign territory to him, he wouldn’t be surprised if she pulled out a tape recorder and told him she’d blackmail him.

“So you’ve been with guys and girls both…” she said, before turning bright red and hiding her face in her arms again.

“Wait, you slept with Selina?” Jonah said from the floor. “Selina  _Meyer_?”

“Yes, Jonah, shut up,” Dan said without looking down at him. “What’s up, Amy? Seriously.”

“I don’t know,” Amy whined without picking her head up.

“Do you have a question about sex?” Jonah asked, snickering as he pulled himself into a cross-legged position and leaned against the wall.

“Not one you’re qualified to answer,” she said, lifting her head for a second so the words would be clear, then putting it firmly back down.

“Hey.” Jonah sounded genuinely wounded by that, but it was a fair point, and Dan didn’t know how to comfort someone when a fair point landed.

“Ames?” Dan asked, but Amy stayed where she was and didn’t say a word. Silence filled the room, broken only by the sound of a crackling bag when Jonah reached for the chips.

“Do you guys wanna watch a movie?” Jonah asked after a few minutes of silence. “The den should be empty by now.”

“Sure,” Amy said, sitting up and grabbing the chips. “Are there more of these?”

Jonah grinned, stood up, and pulled a new bag from the top drawer of his dresser.

“I have never eaten anything as good as these chips,” Amy said seriously, shaking the empty bag in her hand and pulling some crumbs from the bottom, then standing up to follow Jonah from the room.

“You coming, Dan?” Jonah asked.

Dan stood up. Maybe he was higher than he’d thought, because he felt about three steps behind in conversation. “Amy?” he asked, as they followed Jonah out the open door and down the hall.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said.

“But—“ Dan started, as they walked into the den.

“Don’t worry about it, Dan,” Amy said with finality, sitting down on the couch next to Jonah. “So, what are we watching?”


	8. Like That's Really Gonna Set This Free

It was the fourth of July, and there was just about no holiday that Dan hated more. The heat, the crowds, the noise of fireworks. It was mostly a holiday of expectation. He had never had a Fourth that had been fun, just plenty that _would have been fun if..._ Two summers ago, he’d been out with the team and they’d spent the whole night at the secret beach down the railroad tracks waiting for Tyler’s brother who had been “going to try” to bring them a keg “if he could swing it.” He couldn’t. Last summer he’d been away at UPenn at a leadership conference, and the other kids had convinced him to come out for the Fourth, that it would be fun. Of course, they hadn’t planned on any actual activities so they’d ended up getting lost in Philly, which Dan could have called an adventure, except that he hadn’t liked a single person in the group. So the Fourth was not his favorite holiday.

When his parents had roped him into a “family day” at the lake, he hadn’t been too upset, just resigned. But when they’d told him the Brookheimers and the Ryans would be there as well, he’d dared to let himself hope. He shouldn’t have.

It was hot on the beach, and he’d forgotten his sunglasses at home. Jonah was working until late afternoon, so for now it was just him and Amy sitting in beach chairs by the water, ignoring the family volleyball tournament going on behind them. And Amy wasn’t in a talking kind of mood. So Dan was sitting here in his bathing suit, hot, tired, with nothing to drink but fucking iced tea, being blinded by the sun, and with no reading material or anything.

Amy was sitting in a hat and sunglasses with her head tilted back. She hadn’t moved in at least twenty minutes, and Dan was getting pretty sure that she was asleep. For once, her phone was nowhere in sight, and he couldn’t entirely fathom how that was the case.

It was only 11:30 and he was already beyond ready to go home. Lunch was set to be grilled in a few minutes, as soon as the volleyball game was finally won. He was hungry, but not really hungry enough to do anything about it. There was really no solution to it, so he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. If it worked for Amy, it could work for him.

But Dan wasn’t a very good sleeper. He never really had been, and sleeping in the bright sunlight in the middle of the day was a non-starter, though he resolutely kept his eyes closed in a desperate attempt to make it work. It wasn’t too bad to just stay perfectly still with his eyes closed—almost peaceful, if he could get the gears in his head to stop turning. He didn’t even have anything to think about, really. It was all just nonsense about the murky future. He wondered what he would do next summer. And the summer after. He didn’t want to be one of those guys who came home from college for the summers, walking around town like they were somebody, even though they clearly had nothing better to do with themselves than mooch off their parents for a summer. But there was something oddly comforting about this hellish moment, and the idea that if he wanted, this time next summer, he could be sitting on this same beach chair at this same beach next to Amy with the same volleyball game going on behind him. Then again, Amy definitely wouldn’t be home next summer. Jonah might, but Amy wouldn’t. The future was so blurry. It didn’t matter how long he spent planning it in front of the computer, how determined he was, there was still an element of luck, an element of who you know, an element of whatever, x-factor bullshit, and that alone was enough to drive him insane.

But whatever. It was America’s fucking birthday, a day to celebrate the sun and loud noises and rowdy white boys, and the future wasn’t for a while anyway. He opened his eyes. Amy had her eyes open too; he could see where her sunglasses had fallen down on the bridge of her nose a little.

“You were sleeping?” she asked.

“I gave it a shot,” he said, stretching his arms out a little.

Amy “hmm”ed in response, and adjusted her position.

“So, where’s your phone?” he asked.

“What?” she said.

“Your phone? The one that’s usually connected to your hand?” he elaborated.

Amy shrugged.

“Amy.” Dan was a little concerned. She’d been weird lately—ever since they got high that one time, it was like there were all these little things about her that were different. Or maybe he was just noticing them for the first time. How she tapped her fingernails whenever the topic of dating came up. How her irritability tended to follow the weekends, which most people usually enjoyed. How she hadn’t been talking their ears off about the future as much in the past few weeks as she had before. Dan noticed things. He prided himself on it.

“I think it’s lunchtime,” she said, deliberately ignoring him, and standing up.

She was right. The parents had taken to the coolers—Mr. Ryan was setting up the grill, Mrs. Brookheimer was unwrapping a bowl of salad, and Sophie and David had apparently been put on drink duty; opening bottles of ginger ale and stacking cups on the folding table Dan’s dad had just set up, laughing as they went.

Dan didn’t stand. The area looked crowded enough without Dan adding another set of hands to the mix. Besides, what could he do to help? Amy had gone straight to her mother’s side, which said something to Dan straight off the bat about how eager she was to avoid questions from him.

They ate lunch, and sat talking about who-the-fuck-even-cares, and Dan’s mother dropped about seven thousand hints about what a “nice young girl” Amy was, and that she was “so glad you and Danny are spending time together again” as if she didn’t know that Dan was leaving for college in two months and Amy was leaving even sooner.

Dan felt jittery, wanted to get away from his parents, but Amy was sitting firmly next to her mother, as though she knew a conversation with Dan wouldn’t go her way. As if she had something to hide.

It wasn’t until 3:30, when Dan had sat through several hours of painful parent small-talk, not nearly enough of which was about him, that Jonah finally showed up, and someone realized that he was not middle-aged.

“Amy, honey, why don’t you kids take the boat out?” Mrs. Brookheimer asked. Dan’s stomach dropped. A boat. He couldn’t tell which he wanted less right now: this conversation or a boat ride.

“We kids?” Amy asked.

“You and Dan and Jonah,” Mrs. Brookheimer explained, gesturing vaguely towards the far side of the beach, where Sophie and David had ended up in a clump of kids their own age.

“I don’t know, Mom,” Amy said.

“Go on! We’ve kept you long enough!” her mother insisted, handing her the key.

Amy stood up and shrugged. Jonah looked like he hadn’t entirely caught onto what was going on, but followed when Amy gestured. Dan grabbed a few bags of chips and a six-pack from the cooler of beer. There was plenty left, and probably nobody would miss it. He followed Amy and Jonah onto the wooded path between the beach and the docks.

“Do we have to go out on the boat?” he asked. “Can’t we just, like, sit on the dock and tell your parents we went out?”

“What?” Amy called from ahead of him. He couldn’t tell if she hadn’t heard or if she was appalled by the thought.

“Never mind,” he said.

They made it to the dock, and Amy was quick onto her parents’ motorboat. Jonah followed without hesitation, settling onto one of the seats. Dan stayed on the dock.

“You coming?” Jonah asked.

Dan hesitated. “I don’t really like boats,” he admitted.

“Get on,” Amy said, sounding exasperated.  “Don’t be a baby.”

Dan rolled his eyes at her and took a step onto the boat. Wow, that was not stable. He clambered on the rest of the way and seated himself by Jonah, putting the food and beer down by his feet.

“So you can drive this thing, Ames?” Jonah asked.

Amy nodded, focused on the task at hand.

“That’s pretty hot,” Jonah said. Dan smiled weakly, trying to keep his stomach from turning. They hadn’t even started moving yet. He wasn’t going to get sick on this goddamn boat.

“Put your life jackets on,” Amy said, throwing some piles of orange rubber at them.

“Seriously?” Jonah asked.

“Yeah,” she said without humor. “It’s the fourth of July, you don’t think lake patrol are itching to stop some kids?”

“Do we get to take them off?” Dan asked.

“Once we’re stopped,” she said, buckling herself into her own life jacket and turning the key in the ignition. “Let’s go.”

They were off and running. Dan closed his eyes and practiced breathing slowly. Seven in, hold ten, seven out. He almost never used this stupid fucking breathing technique, it had never worked, but it felt the right thing to do just now.

He heard Jonah and Amy laughing, felt Jonah stand up and move to go stand closer to Amy, but he stayed where he was, breathing. Slowly. Seven in, hold ten, seven out.

“Jesus, Dan, you really don’t like boats, do you?” Jonah asked, and suddenly Jonah was there again, and there was a hand on his back and he was breathing and Jonah was kind of rubbing and it felt okay and he felt okay and then the boat coasted to a stop, and Dan opened his eyes, and it still wasn’t ideal, but they weren’t moving anymore and that was something at least. 

Jonah stopped stroking Dan’s back and looked down at the refreshments.

“You brought beer somewhere you thought you’d get sick?” he asked, somewhere between amused and unsurprised.

“I thought we might want it,” Dan muttered.

“Well, you were right,” Amy said, pulling off her life jacket as she took a seat across from them and grabbed a beer and a bag of barbecue chips.

Dan pulled off his life jacket too and leaned back, noticing when he did that Jonah’s arm was behind him. Not around him, just behind him, resting along the boat’s edge.

“Hey, if you see lake patrol you throw your damn towel over this beer, huh?” Amy said. “We are not drinking and boating.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jonah with a fake salute. Amy smiled at him and ripped open the chips.

“So, Jonah, how was work?” she asked, kicking her feet up to sit on the seat next to her.

“The usual,” he said. “Honestly, I should just quit.”

“It’s not like you need the money,” Dan said under his breath, still trying to get his breathing totally under control, reaching out for a handful of Amy’s chips.

“Why don’t you quit?” Amy asked, sounding interested in a way that she didn’t usually. “What keeps you in it? Like, loyalty, or…?”

Jonah laughed. “Nah. Just, you know…what else would I do?”

“Hang out with Dan?” Amy asked. “It’s not like he’s doing anything.”

Dan looked up, wanting to complain, but really he had nothing to say. He was grocery shopping for his mother and driving down the highway on the daily. Sure, he’d made some nice driving playlists but otherwise Amy had a point.

“I don’t know, I guess I just like things that are familiar,” Jonah said. “It’s a good enough job, I’ve had it a while. Everything’s gonna change in two months anyway, why go changing things now?”

“Because…” Amy trailed off. “You got that job to make some extra cash, what, three years ago? Then you start dealing, you make so much more, on better terms, and you still keep this shitty job? Jonah, just because something’s familiar doesn’t mean it’s worth keeping around. Just because it’s familiar doesn’t mean it’s good.”

Dan looked up at her, surprised at how passionate she had become over Jonah’s busboy job. He looked at Jonah, who met his eyes, looking confused and helpless. Amy had turned to look out at the water.

“Hey…Amy?” Jonah asked. She turned back to him. “What’s wrong?”

Amy took a deep breath. “I broke up with Ed,” she said. Cold. Composed. Put-together Amy Brookheimer.

That would explain…well, everything that Dan had been picking up on lately. Maybe even some of the weird questions she’d asked him when they were high.

“Shit,” Jonah said. “That sucks, Ames.”

“I’m sorry,” Dan added.

“I’m not,” Amy said, turning away again to look out over the water. “Not at all, really. It’s like…I’m leaving in a month, you know? What’s the point of going any longer? We both know it’s ending. I mean, he’s going to UVA for God’s sake. We got the prom pictures, two different sets in two different dresses. We got the happy memories of high school romance, what’s the point in keeping it up?”

Dan nodded. “Yeah, I get it, Ames.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t.” She took a sip of her beer. “He keeps calling and texting, like why can’t we just hold off until I leave? And it’s like…because I have to live my life.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dan said.

“I don’t,” Jonah said.

Dan turned to glare at him.

“What? I’m not trying to be insensitive, Amy,” he said. “Obviously you know what’s best for you. But I just don’t get it. Didn’t you love him?”

Dan would have laughed. He cocked an eyebrow and looked at Amy, all set for a significant glance, for an _oh Jonah, so naïve_ look, but Amy didn’t look back at him. She sat with the same kind of pensive expression on her face she got after debates she’d lost, when she was wondering exactly where she’d gone wrong.

“You know, Jonah,” she said, “I don’t really know.”

 

Dan didn’t throw up over the side of the boat, even after the three beers and half bag of chips he’d downed. After jumping off and swimming for a while, he felt pretty refreshed, and the cold water still clinging to him under his towel kept him grounded when the nausea hit. He kept his eyes closed, to be safe, but he actually felt okay when they got back to dock. It was dark by then—the fireworks were sure to be soon, and Dan was feeling…okay, actually. For the Fourth, it wasn’t shaping up too badly. Though that thought had probably cursed it. He bent down surreptitiously and knocked his fist against the dock. Just in case.

As he followed the other two back through the woods to the beach, he felt a rush of something. Maybe it was the beers hitting him, but suddenly he felt so good he wanted to shout. To yell as loud as he could. He had never felt this way before, but suddenly that felt like the only thing to do—make some goddamn noise. It was the fourth of July, the town was full of rowdy assholes being loud, why not join in? He opened his mouth, but his eyes caught on Amy’s hair a few paces ahead of him, and he remembered why he didn’t act like that. Because he wasn’t one of those rowdy assholes. He was going somewhere. He was becoming someone. He had some fucking control over his actions.

He caught himself on a tree trunk for a second. It was a thin birch tree, he could probably have fit his hands around it. He took a moment to breathe again. Tonight was just turning so many shades of weird.

“You okay?” Jonah asked him, half-turned back in his direction.

Dan held tightly to the trunk, breathed in deeply. Exhaled. Smiled. “Yeah,” he said, and followed Jonah out to the beach.


	9. Sometimes I Just Can't Sleep Thinking of Everything We Could Have Been

They were lying on Jonah’s bed, like any other Tuesday night, except it was 10:00 and Amy had just left saying something about how she had to work tomorrow, as though she couldn’t show up to her dad’s office if she got less than eight hours of sleep. Before she’d left, she’d stuck a bunch of those glow-in-the-dark stars on Jonah’s ceiling, because she’d found the pack in a pile of things on his bookshelf and for reasons Dan didn’t understand, she’d felt that the best way to taunt Jonah for his “stoner vibes” would be to do the manual labor of putting them up for him. Dan was staring up at them now. They were thoroughly unimpressive with the lights on.

They had hardly made a dent in the bottle of rum Dan had brought over, because really, it was a Tuesday night and they were just lying on Jonah’s bed and getting drunk right now just felt kind of sad. Neither of them had said anything for a while. It was a nice night—Jonah’s window was open and there was a summer breeze coming in, fanning across Dan’s chest. It was one of those nights that was just the right temperature, which was a nice reprieve from the sticky weather they’d been tortured with the past few weeks.

“How do you think Amy’s doing?” Jonah asked out of the blue.

“What?” Dan half sat-up and turned his head to look at Jonah, who was lying on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, scrolling through Twitter on his phone.

“After the breakup, I mean,” Jonah clarified, looking up to briefly meet Dan’s eyes.

Dan looked back up at the ceiling, settling back down onto his back. “I don’t know. She seems fine.”

“Yeah,” Jonah said. “That’s kinda weird. They were together a long time.”

Dan sighed. “Yeah, Jonah. Amy’s…” he trailed off. “It’s different.”

“I know. It’s just weird.” Jonah shifted on the bed.

“Not for her. She wanted to end it, so she did,” Dan said. “It makes sense in an Amy world.”

Jonah made a noise of assent. Dan looked at him. He was clearly in deep thought, but made eye contact with Dan. Dan raised his eyebrows. “What?”

“Do you think you guys are gonna hook up before we leave?” Jonah said it so fast that Dan wasn’t entirely sure he had heard him right. It took him a second to process, but when it did, he sat up and turned to face Jonah.

“What?” he spat.

Jonah drew back a little. “I was just wondering. Don’t freak out on me.”

Dan nodded. “No, not freaking out, just…surprised.”

“Really?” Jonah snorted. “You guys have been playing this game for years, doesn’t everyone already think you’re banging?”

“So?” Dan asked, a little louder than he’d meant to. “Does that mean we should?”

“I guess not,” Jonah said quietly. “I guess it just always seemed like it was something that would happen.”

Dan snorted. “Not fucking likely.”

Jonah adjusted his position again. “Why not?” he asked, and now it sounded more curious than accusatory.

“God, can you imagine the train wreck?” Dan said. He didn’t know how to explain to Jonah exactly what he meant—that Amy was as cold and emotionless as he always wanted to be, but that he wasn’t really like that. God, Jonah could probably see he wasn’t really like that. He could just imagine Amy finding out exactly how fucked-up he really was, and it was not a picture he liked. He leaned back, balling his fists against the bed behind him and shifting his weight onto them.

“I think…” he said slowly. “I think Amy and I always looked like a good idea, but never would have been. There’s too much…” He didn’t know how to say the next part. “We have so much in common and so much not.” That would have to do, because he’d be fucked if he was going to bare his soul to Jonah tonight.

“Hmm.” Jonah seemed satisfied with that answer, but there was still something of a question in his eyes.

“Why do you even care?” Dan asked. “Do _you_ wanna hook up with Amy or something?”

“Fuck no,” Jonah responded immediately. “Not Amy, no fucking way.”

“Okay,” Dan said, watching him carefully as Jonah’s eyes shifted cagily away from his own. The breeze from the window blew against his arms and back, and he reached to pat his hair down without even thinking about it. Of course, as soon as he shifted his weight to just the one arm, he realized he wasn’t sitting in a very comfortable position, and he adjusted, rolling onto his stomach next to Jonah.

“It’s getting kinda cold out there,” he said, more for something to say than anything else. What had Jonah mean, _not Amy_?

“Do you want a sweatshirt or something?” Jonah asked, shifting as if he was about to stand up.

“No, I’m good,” Dan said, more to stop him than anything else, because he was so damn comfortable, and if Jonah moved, he’d have to readjust again.

Jonah settled back down, and Dan felt him shift ever so slightly closer. Dan relaxed a little bit, letting some of the tension in his shoulders out, and felt a relief spread through him. He let himself flop onto the bed a little more, and felt his leg brush against Jonah’s when he did. Was it just him or…no. Jonah wasn’t…no.

“It’s weird, the cold,” he said, realizing he was babbling but still not really sure what was going on. “Because it’s been so hot, but now it’s like...um…not.”

But he wasn’t really feeling so cold right now. In fact, the side of his body facing Jonah was pretty warm. He wasn’t entirely sure when they’d gotten this close to each other. It was…kind of nice. Although he wasn’t sure that was good. He turned his head to look at Jonah. Jonah was looking at him already, his mouth slightly open and his eyes full of something that looked maybe a little bit like panic or maybe a little bit like…something else.

“Hey Jonah?” Dan said, not totally sure what was going to come next, but not looking away from Jonah either.

“Yeah?” Jonah breathed the word, it came out all fluttery and anxious, and suddenly it all clicked.

“Can I kiss you?”

Jonah swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and nodded.

As he leaned in, Dan didn’t remember ever feeling this unsure, this tentative, when kissing someone, but this was _Jonah_ and suddenly it was like someone had thrown out the rulebook.

It was hesitant. Dan wasn’t sure which one of them was hesitating, maybe both, but there was something withdrawn from the kiss, like it wasn’t real, it was a dream about to end and nobody wanted to get caught all the way in it. But Jonah’s lips were soft on his, and Jonah’s hand was on his neck, and somebody was going to have to be the first to commit, so Dan did, deepening the kiss, tentatively until Jonah gripped his neck a little tighter, and then not so tentatively anymore.

When they pulled apart, Dan’s head was spinning and Jonah was breathless too, his hand relaxed, still against Dan’s neck. Jonah smiled and Dan smiled back, though his stomach was already turning. What did this mean? What was Jonah going to expect from him? Jesus, they were leaving for college in a month and a half, and it was Jonah, and he didn’t even know Jonah was into guys. He forced himself to keep smiling, but Jonah rolled his eyes and swung himself off the bed.

“I’m gonna go get an ice cream sandwich, you want one?” he asked.

Dan looked up at him, more confused than ever. “Sure,” he said.

Jonah left the room. Dan looked around, trying to get his bearings. He had just kissed Jonah Ryan. And it had been…really good. And now he was faced with a month and a half of the summer left with no road map, and honestly _fuck_ Jonah for doing this, because now he was just confused. He groaned a little and rolled onto his back.

Jonah came back into the room and handed Dan his ice cream sandwich.

“Thanks,” Dan said.

“Let’s check out how those stars actually look,” Jonah said, and flicked the lights off before settling down on his back on the bed, not as close to Dan as he could have been, but not exactly as far either.

The stars lit up bright, brighter than Dan had expected, and as he ate his ice cream sandwich, he cast an eye to Jonah. He was looking up at the stars pensively, his own sandwich still in his hands.

“Remind me to thank Amy,” Jonah said. “I never would have gotten around to putting these up myself.”

Dan forced himself to look back up at the ceiling, and tried to stop thinking and just notice the goddamn stars, tried to get himself to make fun of them (because seriously was Jonah twelve years old and in the astronomy club?) or something. But his brain had never worked that way, been able to shut down when he needed it to. So he finished his sandwich and stood up and said “I’m gonna take off, man.”

“Okay,” said Jonah without moving from the bed. “See you later.”

Dan pulled on his shoes. He was just about to the door when Jonah stopped him.

“Hey, Dan?”

“Yeah?” Dan turned, his stomach sinking.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jonah, with a half-smile on his face in the darkness.

Dan opened his mouth, then closed it, and nodded once instead before he left.


	10. God, I Miss the Songs We Used to Sing

Dan didn’t know how they’d ended up in his car—it was arguably the worst-equipped to handle the drive they were planning—but they had, and he took the first shift driving. Amy sat shotgun, fiddling with the radio, and Jonah spread out in the back with the maps.

“I don’t see why we can’t just use our phones,” Amy said for the hundredth time as Jonah bumped her seat with his knee.

“Because, Amy, the whole point of a road trip is to leave home behind us,” Jonah said, rolling his eyes. “And that includes dependence on technology.”

“Jonah, we’re in a car, not a buggy,” she shot back, rolling her eyes.

“It wouldn’t be too hard to get a buggy if that’s what you’re advocating,” Dan said.

Amy rolled her eyes again. Dan hoped she wouldn’t do that the whole trip. She could get stuck that way. Come to think of it, maybe he did hope she would do that the whole trip.

“Why do I even bother with the two of you?” she said, literally throwing up her hands.

“You’re pretty dramatic for a girl who promised to chill this weekend,” Dan reminded her.

“I said I’d chill, not give up all reason.”

Dan met Jonah’s eyes in the rearview mirror and they smirked at each other. Amy caught the look, and turned in her seat so she had a sightline to both of them.

“Don’t pretend like you don’t need me. Without me, you guys would probably end up in fucking Hawaii,” she turned back to face front.

“That’d be pretty impressive though, you have to admit,” Dan said.

Jonah snickered from the backseat. Amy ignored them.

“Come on, Amy, this is our fucking rumspringa!”

“Jonah, you literally just said we had to leave behind our dependence on technology!” Amy turned in her seat to face him. “How is that rumspringa?”

“Seriously, Ames, you’re gonna have to play along if you want to enjoy this,” Dan told her. “We haven’t even left Lancaster County yet. We’re in for a long ride.”

She scowled. “When did you turn into some _wherever-the-wind-takes-us_ kind of hippie anyway?”

He leaned in a little, keeping his eyes on the road. “I have my mom’s GPS in the glove compartment,” he whispered when Amy leaned in to meet him. “For when Jonah gets us good and lost.”

He glanced away from the road for a second to meet her eyes. He could see a reluctant smile she was struggling to bite down. He readjusted in his seat. “Now pick out some music, Amy!” he ordered. “And none of that whiny girls-with-feelings bullshit.”

“Please,” she snapped. “I’m not playing _any_ of your music.”

Jonah laughed from the backseat.

“Whose side are you on?” Dan called back to him.

Jonah shrugged. “It’s every man for himself out here, last I checked. Unless you want to tell me what you guys were just whispering about.” He adjusted in his seat, trying to find a way to fit his long legs in the space afforded him. “Besides, I wanted to ride shotgun.”

 

They stopped for lunch at Big Spring State Park. They had made a group trip to the grocery store the evening before, picking up apples and peanut butter and bread and a container of chicken salad. Jonah had bought some candy, Amy had gotten gum, and Dan had splurged on chips.

They ate at a picnic table, like it was a school field trip, but they were fucking done with school, and every time Dan remembered that, he felt a thrill course through his bones. After they finished eating they walked the short loop through the woods, to the half-finished railroad tunnel. Dan felt almost giddy with the freedom of being out in the woods. Amy watched him like he was an overexcited puppy who might pee on her, and Jonah smiled at all the right places, as if he was trying his best to care the way Dan cared.

Dan knew that they had only agreed to go on this road trip because they saw how much he wanted it. Jonah at least had thrown himself into it, but Amy’s reticence was much clearer. He was sure it would be good for all three of them. Give Jonah a taste of getting away; give Amy some time to actually think about enjoying herself before she left. He wasn’t quite sure what it would give him. He just needed it, the same way he’d needed to spend the rest of the summer driving. At least now he had somewhere new to drive.

 

Somehow so far Amy had swung it so she had never sat in the back. Dan noticed this on the third leg of the trip, after they'd stopped twice--once for lunch and once because Jonah saw a mini golf course when they were off on Route 75 and apparently you have to play mini golf if you're on a road trip (it had actually been pretty fun, not that Dan would admit that out loud, ever). Amy _had_ driven a shift, between lunch and mini golf, so it wasn’t as though she’d been sitting shotgun all along. But Jonah was driving now, and Dan had been in the backseat twice in a row and was starting to feel a little carsick and in the interest of fairness, it really should have been Amy's turn in the back.  
But she had just stopped whining and started singing along to the music she had queued up (Jonah had tried to play his, but she had immediately vetoed), so Dan didn't really want the broach a topic that would get her all pissy again. He closed his eyes and listened to Amy singing and Jonah humming off-key and didn’t think about the future.  


It was about seven and Dan was hungry. They were back driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike ("where the fuck are we even going?" Amy had asked about a half dozen times until she'd gotten tired of Jonah's vague answers about the journey being what really mattered), and Dan was in the midst of an argument he’d been having for the last thirty miles.

“I get it, I’m hungry too!” Jonah said, and Dan didn’t believe him, because if he was this hungry he would stop the goddamn car. “But I don’t wanna stop at like a McDonald’s, that defeats the whole purpose of a road trip. Let’s wait until we find somewhere interesting.”

Dan gritted his teeth and tried not to sound too angry. “Yes but Jonah, we’re on a fucking interstate. The only thing the signs are telling us is the name of the goddamn town. How can we find something interesting if we don’t take an exit?”

“This is why we shouldn’t be on an interstate, Dan,” Jonah snapped back at him. “I said we should do no tolls, no interstates, just small state highways. But did you bitches listen to me?”

“No, Jonah, we didn’t.” Amy sounded annoyingly calm. “Because it was stupid. The interstate is faster and safer.”

“Faster?” Jonah asked. “We don’t have a destination, Amy.”

“Don’t you fucking—“ Amy started to argue, but Dan cut in.

“Right now our destination is dinner. Take the next exit, Jonah.”

Jonah grumbled a little under his breath, but the grumbles sounded more like defeat than anything else, so Dan relaxed a little in the back. It was better this way anyway, because he’d noticed the numbers on the exits getting smaller, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about ending up in Ohio. Jonah pulled off at Exit 67, and Dan leaned closer to the window to see out.

He didn’t believe for a second that Amy had “heard of a great pizza place” in Irwin from her “cousin from Pittsburgh” but when they walked into Romano’s and he smelled the pizza, he had never been more grateful for her subtle googling skills. They split a large pizza and an order of mozzarella sticks, and didn’t even snipe at each other too much.

“Should we find a hotel?” Amy asked as they walked out.

“We can’t drive a little longer?” Jonah asked.

“Jonah, it’s almost nine. We can go out and explore after, I’m just suggesting we maybe lock down a place to sleep.”

Dan nodded and Jonah sighed but did the same. Maybe there was some merit to having Most Practical around.

Amy openly used her phone this time to navigate them to a hotel, and Jonah didn’t argue. Jonah and Dan waited in the car while Amy went in to get them a room, because in her words “nobody’s gonna wanna give you assholes a motel room.”

She came back out in only fifteen minutes, with that look on her face that made Dan shrink in his seat. She slammed the door when she got in.

“You have to be twenty-one to get a fucking hotel room, Dan,” she said, eyes blazing.

“No you don’t!” Dan responded immediately. “I looked it up before we left, I’m not a fucking idiot. It’s eighteen.”

“Yeah well they don’t know that!” she spat. Dan looked at Jonah in the rearview mirror. His mouth was open and he was looking nervously from Dan to Amy.

Amy pulled out her phone.

“We’ll find a different motel,” Dan said. “It’ll be fine.” Because it had to be fine. He had looked it up, he had been careful to do that. Because he didn’t want to get into this situation. He pulled out his own phone to look for somewhere else to go. They sat in silence in the parking lot for a few minutes, then Amy finally spoke.

“Yeah, it says here that the law is eighteen but a lot of places put a twenty-one minimum anyway. Probably because they don’t want to be liable for underage drinking.”

“Well, to be fair…” Jonah said, gesturing to his bag, which contained a half-empty bottle of vodka.

“Not helpful to the issue, Jonah,” Dan said, scrolling. “Okay, I found another place. I’m gonna call and see what their age minimum is.”

He dialed and leaned back in his seat. He could be pretty charming over the phone.

It didn’t work. The next place, they reserved the room over the phone, using Amy’s credit card and name, because she was the one who looked the oldest probably, and likely to be the most sympathetic in case they needed to beg. They drove there hopeful that it would work.

“Remember Ames, don’t mention how old you are unless they ask,” Dan reminded her. He was starting to get nervous, and that made him more nervous. He took a few breaths.

“Yeah, thanks Dan, I get it.”

Jonah and Dan stayed in the car again, this time because any one of them (Amy especially) could pass for twenty-one on their own, but in a group they absolutely couldn’t.

It was about seven minutes, and Dan thought maybe that meant they had actually gotten a room, but Amy shook her head as she walked back to the car.

“It’s in big red letters on my license, guys, this isn’t gonna work out,” she said.

Jonah sighed, and Dan took a deep breath, trying to steady himself against the feeling in his chest.

“So what are we going to do?” Jonah asked.

“I don’t fucking know!” Amy snapped back. “Why don’t you guys come up with a plan?”

Dan gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to keep his breathing under control. He could feel himself breaking into a sweat, and started counting as his breathed.

“Dan? You okay?” Jonah asked from the back.

Dan didn’t answer, timed his breaths carefully and tried to keep his eyes open, but he was getting dizzy and he was absolutely not getting enough air with these fucking breaths, whatever doctor had told him about these needed to be fired, he closed his eyes and tried not to feel his heartbeat pounding in his chest but it was so fast and so hard that he didn’t know what else to do.

“Fuck,” Jonah said.

“He’s shaking,” Amy said nervously.

Dan heard a car door open and close, and then suddenly his door was open and he felt a night breeze on him.

“Hey Dan, let’s get you out of the car, into the fresh air,” Jonah was talking in what he probably thought was a soothing voice, and if Dan could have gotten it together to punch him in this moment, he would have. But he let Jonah guide him to a sitting position on the curb, because the air did feel better than the car had.

Dan tried to breathe. He really did. He looked down at his feet, but they didn’t look very real, so he closed his eyes

“Is this—“ Amy sounded scared.

“He’s having a panic attack,” Jonah said. They both sounded far away. “Dan, can you try to breathe on my count, do you think?”

Dan shook his head, or at least tried to. He was trying to breathe, but it wasn’t easy.

“Okay, I’m gonna stay right here,” Jonah said, putting his hands on Dan’s shoulders.

Too much. Dan shook them off.

“Sorry.”

“What the—“ Amy still didn’t sound very close, but he could hear the disgust in her voice easily enough anyway.

“I looked it up after the last time. We need to stay with him and we should try to get him breathing steadily soon. Also, stop sounding so freaked out. That won’t help.”

Dan didn’t hear Amy’s response. He stopped listening, or trying to listen, and focused on not running away. His fists were clenched really tight. He felt it, but he couldn’t unclench them right now.

It was a few minutes before he opened his eyes and looked up. Jonah was leaning against the back door and Amy was sitting in the driver’s seat with the door still open.

“Hey, you think you wanna give breathing a shot again?” Jonah asked him. He nodded and Jonah started counting. In two. Out two. It was helping. Jonah bumped it to four. In four. Out four. He could handle that. Jonah stopped counting aloud. Dan kept breathing.

“Hey Dan?” Amy said, tentatively, trying on a less harsh voice. “Everything is gonna be okay. I checked on maps. We’re only about two hundred miles from home, and it’s a straight shot down the turnpike. We’re gonna get some coffee and just drive back tonight, okay?”

Dan kept breathing. Nodded. That didn’t sound too bad. He wasn’t totally sure caffeine would be good for him right now, but he also didn’t expect to take the first shift driving after this display.

Jonah counted to six this time, bumping Dan’s breathing up again. In six. Out six. He could feel his chest relaxing. He was covered in a cool layer of sweat that was not pleasant, but he had a shirt in the trunk that had been meant for tomorrow. He could put that on. In a little bit.

Eventually, he felt good enough to stand up and do that. Then he felt good enough to get in the front seat. He opened the window immediately, but as long as there was a breeze, he was okay.

Jonah got in the back. “You okay?” he asked.

Dan nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. It’ll take me a few minutes before I’m 100% but I’m okay.”

Amy glanced at him, then started the car. “Let’s pick up some food and caffeine in those few minutes, what do you think?”

 

It was midnight and he had just traded off with Amy, and was driving. He had downed a bottle of Coke and there was a Red Bull waiting if he needed it. Amy was riding shotgun (she still hadn’t been in the back, and when Jonah took over driving in a couple hours he was absolutely going to mention it) and scrolling idly through her phone looking for music.

“I need something loud,” Dan said. “Maybe you were fine with that acoustic bullshit but we’re not sleeping anytime soon, so. Pump it.”

Amy rolled her eyes, then smirked as she scrolled. “Okay,” she said, and the car filled with the sound of Blink 182. Specifically, All The Small Things. Jonah perked up in the backseat.

“What the fuck, Ames?” Dan asked.

“Don’t you remember?” she smiled at him.

The vocals kicked in and suddenly Dan did. He groaned and hit his forehead against the steering wheel.

“Eyes on the road, Dan!” Amy scolded.

“It’s not _that_ embarrassing, guys,” Jonah said from the back.

“It’s pretty embarrassing, Jonah,” Dan said. “Mostly for you.”

“I’m not ashamed. I was a kick-ass vocalist. You as a drummer on the other hand…”

Dan rolled his eyes. “I told you I wanted to play guitar.”

“Well none of us owned a guitar, Dan,” Jonah said.

“What did you make the drum set out of?” Amy asked.

“Trash cans,” Dan and Jonah said in unison. Dan could remember the fight too, very precisely. Jonah had wanted to use pots and pans but Dan said that was what babies played on. He had scoured the neighbors’ yards to find receptacles of various sizes. He was pretty sure they’d gotten in trouble for it later.

She laughed. “You guys were such losers.”

Dan and Jonah met eyes in the rearview mirror and smirked at each other.

“Excuse me?” said Jonah. “Coming from our band’s official _dancer_?”

Amy stared straight ahead.

“Oh come on, Ames. You can’t call us out and not expect the same,” Dan said.

“I was six years old!” she said.

“And we were much older and wiser and should have known better,” Jonah said sarcastically.

“I think Jonah was still five,” Dan added.

“Fuck you both,” she said, but it was light. Pleasant. Dan suddenly felt full of something warm, like he’d just taken a huge sip of hot chocolate. He didn’t know what to make of that feeling really, but it was a good one.

“Hey, at least we had groupies,” Jonah said from the back.

“Sophie and David do not count as groupies,” said Amy, turning to face him. “They were still in diapers, they were only there because we dragged them.”

“Still counts,” Jonah muttered.

Dan smiled and turned the volume up. “Start it over,” he told Amy, and the three of them sang along loudly, and for some part of him it was just like the day in Jonah’s backyard that for three minutes, all eyes had been on them and their band, and Dan had known for sure that they would be famous one day.

 

They got home at 4 AM. Dan didn’t have his house keys on him, and waking his parents hardly seemed the safest bet.

“You can crash at my house if you want,” Jonah said, closing the trunk once they’d all grabbed their bags.

“That’d be great,” said Dan.

Amy rolled her eyes. “Night,” she said, starting across the street.

“Some fucking rumspringa,” Dan muttered, shaking his head as he followed Jonah to his front door.


	11. Something Tells Me That You're Too Scared to Go

“Fuck!” Amy put her hand to her mouth, and Jonah laughed.

“You okay?” Dan asked, not looking up from the flames. He gave his skewer a turn.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, gingerly pulling at the golden marshmallow on her skewer. “Just a little burn.”

“You shouldn’t touch them when they’re that hot,” Jonah said.

“Okay Jonah, I’m not a child.” Amy pulled at the wrappers of a Hershey bar. “I understand marshmallow safety.”

“I don’t think you do, Ames, or you wouldn’t have burnt yourself.”

Dan leaned back and turned his skewer again. It was 10:30 on a Wednesday night in early August. Amy was leaving tomorrow for her poly-sci bridge. Leaving tomorrow and not coming back. And here they were making s’mores. Like some brochure for a fucking summer camp.

Jonah’s marshmallow was on fire, and he pulled it out and turned it a few times before blowing it out. Amy watched with mild disgust as he ate it right off the skewer.

“What?” he asked, looking up to see Amy and Dan both watching him.

“You’re disgusting,” Amy said, taking a bite of her s’more.

“Really, I’m disgusting? How many of those have you had?” Jonah shot back.

Amy said something through her mouthful of marshmallow, but neither of them could tell what it was.

Dan looked back down at his own marshmallow. It was just right, so he pulled it out and started assembling his s’more.

It was strangely quiet, and Dan felt the weight of the silence pressing down on him. Amy was leaving in the morning. He knew that. He had processed that. At least, he thought he had. But this was really it, and he was only starting to realize that now. Who knew when they’d all be together again, if they’d all be together again. It didn’t seem particularly likely. Two months ago, that would have been fine with him, but now…somewhere in there, something had changed.

The fire was getting low, and nobody made a move to start another marshmallow. Amy took a few steps away from the fire pit and sat down in the grass. Dan and Jonah followed her there, sat down in a cross-legged circle like kindergarten.

“What does it feel like to be leaving?” Jonah asked. Dan looked up with interest.

“Thank fucking god,” Amy said without a trace of humor in her voice.

Jonah half-smiled and Dan “hmm”ed in agreement, though he couldn’t say. Leaving still felt so far off. For so long it had felt soon, and then summer had been like hitting the pause button. Which, if he was being honest, hadn’t been entirely unwelcome.

“I can’t wait to never come back to this fucking town,” she continued.

“What about holidays?” Jonah asked.

Amy frowned.

“Don’t spoil it for her, Jonah,” Dan said, elbowing Jonah in the ribs and laughing. The gesture felt almost absurdly friendly, and Dan wondered when this had become his life. When he had gone from mocking Jonah in public and using him for weed to playfully elbowing him and (even though neither had spoken of it since) _kissing_ him, when he had gone from seeing Amy as a rival but an equal to seeing her as the only person who got him, when he had gone from wanting to get the fuck out of this town as fast as possible to being damn near petrified of a future without these two assholes.

He leaned back until he was lying down in the grass, looking up at the stars. They were bright tonight, and it made him think of the stars on Jonah’s bedroom ceiling and the way Amy had hung them up as if it were a punishment and how he and Jonah had laid on the bed staring up at them instead of looking at each other. Something had changed this summer. Something he didn’t know how to put into words. And honestly, fuck that. Dan was a debater. Words were his everything. Words were how he was going to get his degree, get into law school, get a job, succeed in life. He had no use for things he couldn’t put into words. Or at least, he hadn’t before. He sighed, heavily.

“Are you excited?” he heard Jonah ask Amy.

“Yeah,” she said. “I am. I think. I guess.”

“What does that mean?” Jonah asked again, pushing, probing, wanting to know, to understand.

“I don’t know, Jonah.” Amy sounded like she wanted to dismiss the whole thing, but Jonah probably wasn’t going to drop it, and Dan wanted to hear what she had to say anyway. “I guess I haven’t been thinking about the being there part. Just the not being here part.”

“Why?” Jonah asked, his voice quiet. Dan was still looking up at the stars, but he could imagine Jonah’s face right now, puzzled and childlike as he struggled to understand. He couldn’t know, Dan thought, because he hadn’t had the pressure. He hadn’t felt the drive to succeed at all costs.

“I don’t fucking know, Jonah, this isn’t a John Green book,” Amy spat. “There’s not some deep answer, I just had a lot of stuff on my mind, and not a lot of time to think about how totally awesome college is gonna be.” She finished in a fake valley girl voice that made Jonah chuckle a little. Dan wanted to join in, but he couldn’t find it in him to think that was funny when it hit so close to home. Dan got it. Or at least, he thought he did. College was an escape for Jonah. But for him and for Amy, it was a stepping-stone. It was another box on the to-do list for success.

“Okay.” Jonah seemed to accept that answer, and they lapsed into silence.

There was a little bit of a breeze cutting through the sticky stillness of the August air, and Dan felt it ruffle his t-shirt a little as he stared up at the sky, his eyes blurring because he’d lost the energy to blink. The crickets were out in full force, the noises blurring into each other like one big mess of frequencies. Dan remembered something from physics about sound waves and interference patterns, and wondered if that was why the sound felt like a radio dial being adjusted—different tones coming in at different times, some fuzzy and then some absolutely clear. But it didn’t much matter, he thought, because really the sound just made it feel kind of like he had bugs crawling on him. He probably didn’t, but checking felt like it would take too much energy.

“You okay, Dan?” Jonah asked, in that way he had been doing lately, that whole perceptive thing that was really starting to grate. Dan wasn’t used to people noticing his mood, and now he felt under a microscope every second he wasn’t acting normal.

“I’m good,” Dan answered, not really lying but not really telling the truth either. “Just looking at the stars.”

“Since when are you a fucking astronomer?” Amy asked, snorting.

“Ooh, good one, Ames,” he shot back without moving. “Cut me right to the core with that. Astronomer. What a killer burn.”

He swore he could hear her roll her eyes as silence fell over them again. It was only a few seconds before he felt Jonah shift and lie down next to him, and a few more before he felt Amy join them on his other side.

They stayed almost eerily quiet. After a few minutes, Dan turned his head in either direction to make sure they hadn’t fallen asleep. They hadn’t. They were staring at the sky like they were in some kind of trance or something, so he looked back up too. He wasn’t sure if the crickets had gotten quieter or if his ears had adjusted, but suddenly he wasn’t hearing them anymore. He was only hearing breaths—Amy’s deep, calm, and even; Jonah’s faster and just a little raspy; his own erratic and loud.

Dan started looking for constellations, but gave up and settled for tracing airplane routes across the sky with his eyes. He wanted to say something, but he still didn’t have the words, so he just stayed there, watching blinking lights move across the sky and listening to three different breaths.

He wasn’t sure how long it had been when Amy stirred next to him, when her breathing hitched and she sat up, but he knew that he should do the same. He felt Jonah follow as Amy shifted to face them.

“It’s getting late,” she said. “I should probably go.”

Dan stood when she did. Jonah, in his mess of limbs, took a little longer to rise.

This was the last moment. It was time for goodbyes, and how the fuck did you say goodbye on such a grand scale? They stood in something like a circle, Jonah shifting from foot to foot awkwardly, Dan still, Amy adjusting her shorts and smoothing wrinkles in her shirt, and Dan was hit all over again with the finality of the night.

Amy looked up and met his eyes in the darkness. “Bye,” she said tentatively, and moved in. They hugged awkwardly. Dan wanted to hold on or something, physically communicate what he apparently couldn’t with words, but this was Amy and a hug was enough of a stretch for them both.

Her hug with Jonah was even shorter, and when they broke apart, she stood in front of them for about a second too long, as if there was something else to say or do, but really aside from hugs, what else was there? None of them were the tearful type.

Amy smiled and gave an awkward half-wave. They watched her walk away until she disappeared around the side of the house, then Dan turned to Jonah.

“I’ll see you later, man,” he said.

Jonah nodded, shifting uncomfortably.

Dan turned and cut through to his own backyard, shaking his head to clear it, to try to get back to the point where things made sense.


	12. Like a Ghost, You've Been Haunting All These Dusty Old Roads

The thing was, now that Amy was gone, it was pretty much impossible to live in freeze-frame. He was forced to acknowledge that in three weeks, he would be packing up his Jeep with whatever earthly possessions he deemed necessary for college and he would be leaving too, getting the hell out of Amish country, driving south down the I-85 to North Carolina. He would be back, sure, but just for visits—never to stay.

Because Dan had sat back down at his computer with his plans and he had realized that he had spent the last eighteen years working along specific lines. These lines on these charts that he had plotted meticulously that would take him to the only place he’d ever wanted to be. These lines on these charts that would take him to power. This summer was inconsequential to the charts. To the plan. He was going to be a success. And that meant sticking to the plan. Staying on the plotted lines.

And that meant he wasn’t coming home next summer. It meant things were never going to be the same between him and Jonah and Amy, if they ever all saw each other again. Because Dan was entering a new world, and in that world, friends were for advancing his career. Friends were for getting him into the right internships, the right jobs, the right social circles. He was going to have a lot to do at school. He wasn’t going to have time to maintain friendships back home that were never going to pay out in the long run.

So the problem was right now. He had three weeks left. Three weeks at home with not much to do except some shopping for his dorm. Three weeks with Jonah, who was eager and curious and whose company felt like a contract. Who Dan was going to have to walk on eggshells around now that Amy was gone, because aside from the night after the road trip fiasco (when they’d both crashed immediately), they hadn’t been alone together since…well. He didn’t want to bring it up.

But this summer had been…well, it had been almost entirely good. He wasn’t sure he was ready for it to end entirely. Which meant walking a delicate line between two worlds—between the world he was leaving and the world he was preparing himself for. This summer had been a relief, had been something good, but he had to be ready to leave it behind in three weeks.

 

Dan took a long sip from the bottle of whiskey, then passed it to Jonah. He chased it with some Pepsi, and he handed that to Jonah too, just in case.

“Thanks,” Jonah said, taking a sip as well. They were sitting on the floor of Jonah’s bedroom, leaning against the wall. The room was surprisingly bare without the posters on the wall, and the books in the shelves, and the usual clutter and mess on the floor. Jonah was all packed up, leaving tomorrow, and they had been celebrating with this bottle for the last hour, enough to get them good and buzzed.

“It’s so weird to be leaving,” Jonah slurred. “I’m leaving.”

Dan nodded. “Yeah, you’re leaving, buddy.” He wasn’t quite at Jonah’s level, but he should probably get there, because drunk Jonah wasn’t fun if you weren’t comparably drunk. He took the bottle back and took another sip.

“I’m so fucking pumped for college,” Jonah said.

Dan smiled and nodded, putting on a show. College was exciting, he was eager, blah blah blah. It was getting easier to fake, which was good, because it was the kind of thing he would have to fake once he got there—fake enthusiasm at orientation, at rush, in any and all social settings. It had been a long time since Dan had had to fake anything so big. But to maintain the right image in college, there were a few things he was going to have to fake, and enthusiasm was one of them. The others…well, he was trying not to think of them just yet.

“It’s a whole new start,” Jonah said, mirroring Dan’s own thoughts, but with a fluffy filter. “I get to start all over.”

Dan hesitated over that one, then patted Jonah on the knee. That was the best he could do—he didn’t have a lot to say about Jonah’s status in high school. They hadn’t ever officially agreed to not talk about it, but over the course of the summer, memory lane had gone from infancy to middle school and then…stopped. They’d shared their own stories, sure, but in the detached way that you do with relatives, as though relating an experience entirely other, explaining backstory. No “remember when”s from ninth grade until graduation.

“I am gonna get so much fucking tail in college.” Jonah said, his innocent excitement turning to harsh bravado in what seemed to Dan like an instant. Dan chugged the whiskey, then looked at the bottle. They’d finished about two-thirds of it. He should probably stop drinking now.

“Seriously,” Jonah said, meeting Dan’s eyes. “Penn State chicks, hit the deck because Captain Jonah is coming aboard!”

Dan shifted his legs a little. “Really?” he asked. “You’re going with a sailing metaphor? When talking about all the _female_ action you’re gonna get?”

“Fuck you, Dan,” Jonah said, and it was just so easy that Dan had to keep it going a little while longer.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to offend the seaman in you.”

“Yeah, very fucking funny.” Jonah had a look on his face like _enough_ and Dan, thinking it over, decided this probably wasn’t the best topic for further mockery, given…well. Anyway.

“Do you think Amy’s already kicking ass?” he asked, slurring a little with how fast the words came out.

“Probably,” Jonah agreed quickly. “Isn’t she always?”

Dan nodded, only a little bit bitter. He looked out over the room again. It was getting darker, and the lamp in the corner wasn’t doing much to combat the situation. He could see the stars on the ceiling starting to glow. “It’s so weird,” he said. “Seeing your room so empty.”

Jonah laughed a little. “Yeah. But you know. It makes it more real. I won’t live here anymore tomorrow.” He looked curiously at Dan, who was nodding. “Isn’t your room pretty empty too? You’re leaving in like, three days, you have to have packed some.”

Dan shrugged. “Yeah, some. But I’m not bringing all this…stuff.” He gestured around at Jonah’s room.

“What stuff?” Jonah tipped towards Dan, and Dan shoved him back upright. They should really stop drinking. He set the whiskey bottle down deliberately.

“Like…” Dan gestured vaguely around again. “Posters and shit. Stuff. I’m bringing clothes and books and my computer. The stuff I, like…need.”

Jonah exhaled and laughed. “Sorry, I forgot I was talking to a fucking robot.”

Dan swallowed hard, then turned on the grin. “That’s me! Ice man Dan.”

Jonah shook his head, still laughing. “It sure is,” he said, under his breath.

It’s exactly the kind of comment that would have pissed Dan off under any circumstances, that would have gotten him pushing and yelling and hitting back. But he was just so tired. He was too tired to have a Talk with Jonah. It was the last night of their lives as they knew them, and Jonah might be thrilled about that, but Dan was not. He was just too tired. So he ignored it.

They finished off the bottle of whiskey, which was probably ill-advised. By the time midnight rolled around, they were lying on Jonah’s bed. Dan had gotten sick of looking at those goddamn stars, and had his eyes closed. Every once in a while, Jonah would mention something from the summer, a memory or a joke. Dan responded halfheartedly, hearing in Jonah’s voice how much he wanted this to be some kind of bonding evening, some kind of solid cemented ending, something that he could look back on fondly. Dan didn’t really want to deprive him of that. And it wasn’t like he himself cared that much. He just wished that he could make the little twinges in his gut stop. He wished that when Jonah turned his head toward him and said “remember when Amy threw the CD I’d made out the window?” it didn’t feel like a balloon in his chest.

He wished that even as he responded with “Well, you should have known better than to try to play heavy metal in her car,” he could just smile and let it feel natural, and not feel like something sharp was pressing into his throat, catching his voice on its way out.

He swallowed around the pain, he breathed through it. He didn’t show weakness. It was time to get past that anyway. He was starting his real life now, and he didn’t have time for weakness, for connections that made him feel this way. He lay on Jonah’s bed until the early morning, listening to Jonah reminisce quietly in the dark, sometimes opening his eyes enough to see the green stars glowing above him and sometimes not. When the sky outside had lightened to a royal blue and Jonah hadn’t spoken for what seemed a long while, he stood to go. He was standing in the doorway when he heard Jonah’s sleep-rough voice behind him.

“Hey, Dan?”

Dan’s throat dropped to his stomach, and he turned around. “Yeah?” he rasped, his voice hardly recognizable itself. He looked down at Jonah, who had his neck stretched and angled like a crane to make bleary eye contact with Dan.

They looked at each other in silence for a few beats of Dan’s heart.

“Bye,” Jonah said simply.

Dan swallowed hard and nodded. “Bye,” he said, the word only crackling a little on its way out. He gave Jonah a half-smile before he left the room, left the house, laid down in his own backyard, and went to sleep in the grass.

 

* * *

 

Dan was leaving tomorrow, and it had only just hit him exactly how much he had to do. He had a list of “dorm essentials” he still hadn’t bought. He had to get his oil changed, his car inspected, and pick up the dry-cleaning for his mother (because apparently it being his last day at home would not excuse him from his previous commitment to run errands for her). He wandered the aisles at Bed Bath & Beyond alone, pissed off, because why did he need a fucking laundry bag anyway? But he had a list, and Dan with a list had always been an unstoppable force regardless of his interest in the list, so he moved efficiently, and the whole affair took less than an hour.

Next stop was the mechanic, and of course it wasn’t until he got there that he realized he hadn’t brought anything to do in the time it would take to get the work done. He was restless and fidgety and not in the mood to sit in the waiting area that smelled like gasoline, so he gave his name and phone number and started walking, without a direction in mind, just following the footpath that diverged from the road into a stretch of woods.

When he came out the other side of the trees, it knocked him sideways to realize that he was looking at the park. He had never come through this path, and he hadn’t been to the park in…years. Well, not in daylight, at least. It was a popular pre-gaming spot, but that was over by the basketball court all the way across the field. He had come out by the little man-made pond, just a few paces from the playground. And suddenly, something clicked into place, and he looked up, and there was the willow tree where they had played when they were kids, and he didn’t entirely know what he was doing, but he had the time to kill, so what the hell.

He took the brief walk around the pond, and stood underneath the tree. It seemed…so much smaller. It was still a tree, obviously, still very large and weathered, and hell maybe it had even grown a little in the past eight years, but proportionally he had grown more. He was an adult now, or at least, he had the potential to be. Tomorrow he was leaving and he wasn’t going to come back for longer than a few weeks ever again. This was small. This was nothing. This was an insignificant place in an insignificant town where he had played insignificant games with insignificant people. He knew that logically. He knew that one day he would look back and it would all seem so insignificant, so worthless compared to what he had done…

He sank down to a crouch, then turned and sat, leaning against the tree trunk. It wasn’t small yet. It wasn’t insignificant yet. It was smaller than it used to be, sure, but it still wasn’t small. He still hadn’t done anything to prove he didn’t belong in this town, prove he was worth more than this. He could, and he _would_. But right now…this was it. This tree and this town and Amy and Jonah. But that wasn’t quite right either. Amy had left. Jonah had left. He was this tree and this town, and tomorrow when he drove away for good…what would he be then?

 

* * *

 

The car (fully serviced and inspected and ready to go) was packed with boxes and bags and pretty much everything he was carrying with him. He had his sunglasses and his t-shirt, and eight hours worth of driving music on his phone. He had said goodbye to his parents and his brother, and he had stopped at Starbucks for an iced coffee. And he was actually leaving.

He was in the driver’s seat and he was turning the key in the ignition and he was pulling out onto the open road, the back roads he had driven all summer, all his life, hitting the highways he had memorized months ago, driving out beyond every boundary he had become so familiar with in the last eighteen years.

He knew exactly where he was headed. He knew exactly where he was leaving.

He turned the music up and tried to smile. And tried to breathe. And tried not to think too hard about where he was right now.


End file.
